Greetings, folks!

ArcheAge is coming offline for maintenance at the times listed below.

EU: 2AM UTC - December 5
NA: 8AM PST - December 5

Downtime is expected to be approximately 2 hours. There's no patch with this downtime.

Thanks

Greetings!

We're back with another update:

• Ring collection SFX polished.
  
• Added SFX on energy wall cross.
  
• Modified UI panel materials.
  
• Tutorial information moved from menu to wall panels.
  
• Contact information added to question mark icon menu.
  
• Reduced download size.

NOTICE: For a better visual experience, if you have recently updated to Steam VR 1.1.3, go to your Steam VR settings, and in the Video category uncheck Enable Motion Smoothing before playing.

Happy Holidays!
MMI

The default and beta builds of SteamVR have been hotfixed with the following changes.

Oculus:

• Rolled back Oculus SDK to previous version (1.20.0)

Some users have reported getting stuck on an old version of the Oculus runtime which is not compatible with the latest Oculus SDK. Therefore, we have switched back to using the older version until this gets sorted out.

You can check which version of the Oculus runtime you are on by launching the Oculus desktop app, selecting Settings along the left, then the General tab. Ensure "Unknown Sources" is enabled, then scroll to the bottom to find the app's version number. If you have an earlier version than 1.32.0.730459, you may need to manually uninstall the Oculus software and redownload and install from their website.

Another common problem with the Rift headset not being found (which shows up as error 108 in SteamVR) is with plugging into the wrong USB slot on your computer. Try a different one or refer to the Oculus troubleshooting for more suggestions.

If you are still having problems, it is always good to launch the Oculus app and make sure the headset is working there first, and only then launch SteamVR. Some users have taken steps in the past to attempt to prevent Oculus Home from launching and have since reported that this is causing problems with newer versions of the Oculus runtime. If this is something you have done, you may need to undo those changes.

Skeletal Input:

• Fix for GetSkeletalAction data returning VRInputError_InvalidHandle instead of VRInputError_None when no controllers are attached and the app was built using the previous version of the IVRInput API

Ryan North's To Be or Not To Be currently on sale for less than a Triple, Venti, Half Sweet, Non-Fat, Caramel Macchiato (maybe - depending on where you live)!

-1.2
-Fixed
Game freezing on loading save after deaths.
-Changed
Changed ai to not bleed the player every time.
Increased the amount picked up build parts, nails etc.
Changed brightness so nights are not so dark.
Changed The way loot gets Spawned, Items will now spawn on shelfs tables etc (No more Spamming [E] and [Tab] looking through cupboards).
-Adjusted
Added more Item Spawn locations in industrial buildings/Containers.
Added some industrial spawns to the back of the white truck trailers.
Slightly increased the Hunger and Thirst Depletion.
Slightly increased the stamina regeneration rate.
-Added
Doe and stag spawns which can be harvested with a knife or axe for raw meat.

Encrypted Collection Cache Arrives in The Division



Agents!

We have released four iterations of the Encrypted Cache since its launch, with 19 collections bundled throughout Mark I – IV. We wanted to give players a more direct opportunity to earn the collections. On December 6, we are introducing the Encrypted Collection Cache! Found at the Premium Vendor in the Terminal, these loot containers include exclusive vanity items that are purely cosmetic. Designed with vanity hunters in mind, the Encrypted Collection Cache only contains collection items. If you are missing cosmetics from any of the 19 collections, this cache is your chance!

With the introduction of the Collection Cache, we are decommissioning the Mark I – IV caches on January 10th. While the caches themselves are being removed, players will still have the opportunity to earn their contents periodically on the in-game store as direct purchases. Be sure to keep an eye out!

We are also reintroducing last year's Holiday Cache for a limited time! Until January 10th, you can earn the Winter Holiday Collection alongside holiday emotes.

Opening Encrypted Caches requires Cypher Keys, which can be earned through a few different means. The first is simply by playing The Division. Killing bosses, completing Commendations, and completing Search and Destroy missions all reward Cypher Key Fragments. Ten Fragments are required for one Cypher Key, and one Cypher Key opens one Encrypted Cache. The alternative is through Premium Credits, which can be purchased at the Premium Vendor. Cypher Keys can be purchased in bundles to open Encrypted Caches.

Thank you to our community for supporting The Division! Be sure to share your Agents in complete Collections with us on the Official Forums, Reddit, and Twitter!

/The Division Dev Team

(Cross-posted from the devblog here--follow link for better formatting.)

It almost seems unbelievable, but we're already pushing into our sixth year of full-time development!

Once again it's time to look back over the past year at our progress, which in 2018 includes several major releases, other roguelike happenings, and our first full year on Steam. Here's an image collage to get us started :D


Selection of images from the past year of Cogmind-related development as posted on the dev blog, forums, and Twitter (full mega size here).


This year we hit a pretty surprising milestone: Over 10,000 hours of work on Cogmind!


Cogmind Monthly Development Hours, 2013.7-2018.11. (The color coding is for different aspects of development tackled each month, the subject of a future in-depth article to come at a later time.)

The tally at the end of November just edged past that mark to reach 10,062. In Year 5 I added another 1,690 hours, which is 17.4% less than the 2,046 hours of 2017. Work on the game itself totaled 763 hours this year, compared to 896 hours of community-related work (purple). That's a 1:1.17 game-to-community ratio for 2018, compared to 1:1.10 last year. The lower ratio, as well as overall decrease in hours, can both be attributed to a number of factors:

• Prior to Steam I did occasional small progress updates on the forums, but shortly after the Steam launch there were community requests for frequent news, so I decided to try even more regular reports in the form of "SITREP Saturday." This does mean I have to spend more time preparing these updates, though I'll admit they've been crucial in helping the dev process seem more alive and driving more sales to... keep development going xD
  
• I've also been streaming more! And over this past year have even started uploading most of the videos to my YouTube channel. This, too, is taking more time out of direct development, but I'll also admit it's been beneficial in a number of ways, like helping new players learn more about the game, sometimes attracting new players, and giving me more chances to play and walk through everything that's going on, which sometimes leads to balance changes or new content. I mean I'm going to play anyway, so may as well do it online to get the other benefits, too, right? :) (it's also been a lot of fun just hanging out with the community, but technically it still counts as "work"!)
  
• Even now, 19 months after it happened, The Concussion continues to be a drag on development. Dealing with it still requires a fair number of hours spent on hospital visits every week for treatment, and I have no choice but to sleep more than I normally would each day. Altogether these hours come out of direct dev time, since I can't reasonably reduce the amount of community involvement without taking a clear hit in terms of revenue :/

The biggest chunk of total usable hours that were instead allocated elsewhere went to POLYBOT-7, although technically that has indirect benefits for Cogmind as well, since it's a somewhat similar game and got some decent attention. I'll talk more about that later.

All that said, 2018 has certainly been a very productive year. According to the graph, November actually saw more work on the game proper than any single month since April 2017, the month right before the major Beta 1 release--from this you can probably tell that the upcoming Beta 8 has a decent number of fresh goodies ;). And this year we finally got to a number of major features required for 1.0, making good progress checking off the last remaining bits of the roadmap, alongside other additions.


Although there were only four major releases in Year 5, every one pushed Cogmind forward in a big way.

Beta 4 and Beta 5 piled on tons more QoL, improved the early game, and reworked imprinting to make it a much more interesting strategic choice. Then the following two releases took longer than any had before...

Beta 6 was the achievements update, where we got a non-Steam-reliant system including 256 achievements spread across six categories. You can read more about their design here.


Don't worry, that's not all. We've got more where that came from ;)

Most recently Beta 7 finally replaced the placeholder robot hacking system that's been in there since 2015, which I'd dubbed the "last major system" we'd need before heading to 1.0. I'm pleased with how it's turned out (better be--it took forever to design and implement!) Some further adjustments were made in Beta 7.1, and we'll probably get some more robot hacks eventually, but for now you can play with the 65 already in there :D

We also had a little fun for April Fool's this year, the kind of thing I'd like to do again... On that note, be on the lookout for another special intermediate update at some point this month, hopefully not long before Beta 8 itself lands.


An assortment of 2018 progress gifs!


So what other peripheral activities was I up to this year instead of working purely on Cogmind?

Well, 2018 is only the second time I've participated in 7DRL since creating the first iteration of Cogmind back in 2012. You can read more about that, and the game itself, in the original release announcement. One could say it's a Cogmind-like ;)


POLYBOT-7 box art.

It really ate up a ton of time, though, which is kinda funny because it's suppose to be a "7-day" roguelike xD. All told I took a month off for that including planning, the week itself, and writing a massive postmortem. I'm very glad to have done it, and would love to do more 7DRLs, though I'm thinking it's probably a better idea to skip 2019 in the interest of getting Cogmind to 1.0.

I also took part in this year's Roguelike Celebration, which while technically only a couple days long also requires that I travel around the world, so there's that plus the fact that I need to arrive even earlier to avoid serious jet lag, and then I combined it with a bit of vacation to make the trip more worthwhile. Such a great event, and although my talk wasn't focused on Cogmind in particular, being about roguelikes did of course still provide a few opportunities to mention my own work. Beyond the actual attendees, the video of that talk was watched over 6,000 times in its first month o_O

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

And although it didn't really take much time, I did finally release a new version of REXPaint, one of my primary dev tools and one that's used by quite a few other devs and artists. I do have bigger plans for it, including putting out a sizable 2.0 one day, but don't want that to interfere with Cogmind development so keep waiting until at least Cogmind 1.0 is a thing.


As usual I've been writing a lot--documenting events, analyzing things, sharing knowledge...

One of the highlights this year is being featured as the front page main article on Gamasutra three separate times!

• Workflow and Design Behind Creating One Game from Another in a Single Week (7DRL Postmortem)
  
• Designing and Building a Robust, Comprehensive Achievement System
  
• How to Make a Roguelike

These are all articles originally serialized on the Grid Sage blog which I then merged into larger single articles for that site.

As mentioned earlier, this year I've also been putting together a ton of progress reports for the forums/Steam. We're up to 40 SITREPs now...


A whole bunch of SITREPs...

In addition to the blog and these other outlets, I've continued hosting the r/RoguelikeDev FAQ Friday discussions. #69 through #76 are all from this year, and you can check them out for writings on topics like Packaging and Deployment, Map Memory, Movement, Procedural Generation, and Consumables.


While Cogmind may have been on sale for three and a half years now, it's only been on Steam for a little over a year. I haven't been doing any business-related articles like I used to, not since the launch post-mortem from November 2017, though I did take a stat-heavy look at player metrics on Steam. (It was nice to get that out of the way before GDPR this year convinced me to change Cogmind stats back to being opt-in only, meaning that any data we collect now is only a minority of the total.)

Today I've put together a graph showing how sales on Steam have been trending over time:


Cogmind sales history on Steam, Oct 2017~Nov 2018. Note: Sales off Steam are excluded here, but I mirror all discounts on my website, and the relative amount of revenue from direct sales pretty consistently hovers between 10-15% of all revenue, because yeah a lot of people buy games through Steam but Valve takes a huge nearly one-third cut of revenue from games sold on their site!

Sales are decent considering it's already been a year, though you can clearly see the total volume shrinking. Apparently I need to do more major releases paired with visibility rounds :P ("Visibility rounds" are Steam's option for developers to show a game off to more people a limited number of times during its lifetime, and which must be paired with a significant update.)

Or I guess just doing discounts like 25%+ would likely bring in a lot of revenue, although I don't really like the potential long-term impact that can have, not with a game as niche as Cogmind. I'm being as conservative as possible here... Besides, I already promised to keep the occasional discounts to 10% during EA, so not much room to maneuver there ;)

I did have that single two-week 25% discount at the end of last year in exchange for Valve giving me free front-page publicity for a day during that period, so it's good to see what kind of impact those things can have (I wrote about this on TIGS).

Financially we're doing okay, but I'm starting to get worried about next year. This won't change much with regards to development plans since it was already about time to start aiming closer to 1.0 anyway, though I can see it keeping me from straying too far from that goal in 2019 :P

Special thanks to Shogo, Joshua, Wladimir, Gary, and others for your generous donations this year to help keep development going!


If possible I'd like to reach 1.0 next year! So first we're going to get an action-packed Beta 8, then I'll switch gears to focus on features that must be done by 1.0 (which is just a milestone, by the way, not the end of the road!).

There are absolutely tons more optional features I'd like to add, but I'm pretty sure I won't be able to safely fund development past another year of EA. We haven't yet hit the review threshold I was hoping for, at least not in Steam terms (we've passed the threshold, but they don't count reviews from non-Steam purchasers :/). I mean, yeah we could've hit it already if I'd only released on Steam rather than via direct sales so long before, but to be honest this wouldn't have been a net positive because a huge chunk of Alpha revenue would've gone to Valve rather than me, making it hard to put so much time into polishing, so I'm glad things have worked out as they have so far.

But anyway, who knows, we may still hit it if I take too long to finish 1.0 ;)

Many thanks to everyone who's left a review so far--we've definitely got a much higher review-to-sale ratio than your average game on Steam <3

As for the release date, "next year" is a pretty broad target, though I can get a little more specific for you: We're going to get at least several more Betas before reaching 1.0, so it's unlikely to happen before Q4. Of course, if it gets too late I may have to avoid the holiday season and end up pushing it into 2020. October would be an okay month, but I'm not too keen on releasing in the months shortly after that. Anyway, we're flexible here :)


Lots of fun toys coming in 2019!

The second Last Bot Standing playtest is over, bringing us six fresh new levels!
Thanks to everyone who participated!

Next event is Saturday Dec 15th with the theme Metal Christmas!

Here is why these levels were a blast to play, and are now available:




Simple and fun! Everybody liked this level when we played it.
Jump around in a kitchen, like a little ant with a giant laser sword trying to kill the other ants instead of collaborating on whatever it is ants do!



Yay! What a fun level! With some beautiful toys and playful upgrade drop scenarios, the Kid Zone made us feel childlike joy. :)



The light shines brightly in space! Really cool level with a lot of vertical jump pad action.



Probably the level with the most innovative mechanics and theme of everything we played!
Experience the chaos of spawning in a prison full of murderous robots. If you survive the first few seconds the rest of the level is also really neat!



Don't smelt, little human! Running around this level is a ton of fun. The upgrade drops had some really unique configurations, giving this level a good balance between danger from hazards and your fellow contestants.



Epic and beautiful, this level lets you die inside a glorious cathedral. Inspiring use of light and shadow!

These levels were very close to being included, and deserve to be mentioned:

• Neon Baths (fencing_vogel) - Pretty and fun to play! We decided not to include it due to the lack of clarity around the neon blue things actually concealing lava.
• Beacon in the ocean (Sir Kotok) - This level was super cool, but also suffered from lava that did not look like lava. Perhaps we should add color variants to lava... :)
• Dragon Ball Super Tournament of Power Arena (Destroyed) (Silva 01) - This level was really good looking, but a really hard to get to Final Zone made us reluctant to add it.

Thanks everyone for making such cool levels and participating in the event!

These playtest events have been a ton of fun, so we're gonna keep doing them!

The next theme is: Metal Christmas!
We want to see levels that capture that holiday spirit of cutting up your festive friends, and letting their robot bodies rain down upon you like snow!

Join us on Saturday Dec 15th, at 10am PST!

And just so there is no confusion, we are currently working on Story Mode Chapter 4.
Keep your eyes out for some early weapon exploration footage in an upcoming blog post! :)

An update for Kreedz Climbing has been released. This patch will be automatically applied by Steam within 15 minutes. You may have to restart Steam for the update to immediately begin downloading.

Please note that when a patch is released, the currently running servers will be out of date and won't show up on your server browser anymore. Once they update they will appear again!

EDIT2:

• Fixed the plugin breakage for realsies!

EDIT:

• Reverted a change to entity teleporting that appeared to break the WR bot plugin.
  
• bot_add is no longer a cheat when executed by the server (still a cheat for clients).

Changes:

• Fixed an issue where Kreedz Climbing considered a player on the ground incorrectly, which was a discrepency with Counter-Strike 1.6. Fixing this should make the game's bhop the same! A big thank you to hoLy for his descriptions that helped me track this issue down. Demos will still be compatible after this change. Hopefully this is the last of the movement inconsistancies!
  
  
• Toned down the art tool muzzle brightness as it was too bright.
  
• Optimised workshop caching on the client.
  
• Optimised server FPS.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed the art tool buzzing when changing colours underwater.
  
• Fixed plugins run on local servers being unable to locate some subscribed workshop files.
  
• [Dedicated server] Fixed automated_server.bat and update_kreedclimbing_server.txt being reset if the server is verified with SteamCMD.