Inspired by the battle of the Brest fortress, the Krepost map on the Eastern front is fought in and around an outpost, leading up to the massive Brest fortress that lies on the horizon. In this encounter we focus on close quarters, man to man combat. Different from the other encounters, the Krepost encounter has three different objectives spread around the massive building.

Krepost is build next to a river, just to the west. It gives a great natural barrier which protects the outpost from that direction. Three small towns surround Krepost, each connected to Krepost with a small wooden bridge. The north and south have been chosen as staging areas for each of the fighting factions. The town to the east allows for some nice flanking maneuvers to the third entrance of the outpost.



Inside the outpost there are many rooms to visit, connected by long hallways. A lone artillery shell has an impact in the roof on the western side of the structure, not much remains of the second floor, yet a small ridge of the floor allows players to take the upper route between two of the objectives.



In the center of Krepost lies a courtyard, filled with boxes of supplies from a fleeing army. These boxes create excellent cover for those brave enough to cross the relatively open field. It is best not to linger too long in the courtyard, many windows within the outpost give excellent firing positions into the courtyard.



The two entrances to the north and south allow soldiers to get on top of the ramparts, giving an excellent vantage point across the courtyard. But not just over the courtyard, also over the bridge that the enemy uses to cross the moat often providing excellent targets to shoot at, if the opposing gatehouse can be taken.

Starship Commander: Arcade is available at local VR arcades now. We have an official list of arcades carrying the game here:


https://drive.google.com/open?id=1I1Y6vsvrePLzJlfLa5WU7o_t0h2g8M41&usp=sharing

If you are a LBE operator who wants to be on this list, please contact Alexander Mejia at alexander.mejia@human-interact.com

You can join our Social Channels to be up to date on annoucements:

Twitter

Facebook

Discord


We Live stream every Friday playing VR and classic adventure games at 1P PT/ 4p ET / 22:00 CET. Subscribe so you don't miss out:


YouTube

Twitch

Hi Everyone, here are the results of the December contest!

1. Major_Melon - 98,730,973
   
2. Gormandizer - 20,371,832
   
3. SVW1899 - 16,188,718
   
4. Zotmeister - 14,463,886
   
5. Sakurazaki - 7,340,691

I will be running down the list and trying to friend people to be able to chat with them, so if you are on the list, please accept any friend request from me you may receive if you want your prize!

Thanks again to all who participated!

NCC Moore

Happy New Year!
From all of us at Eagle Dynamics, we want to wish you a happy new year and every success and happiness for 2019! We look forward to sharing it with you, and we have many exciting projects during 2019! What follows is a listing of aircraft projects that we and our valued-partners will be working on in 2019. We do not expect for all these projects to be released in 2019, but this is where our focus will be this year.

In next week’s newsletter we’ll talk about the non-aircraft projects that we’ll be working on during 2019.

DCS: MiG-19P by RAZBAM Simulations



The DCS: MiG-19P by RAZBAM will be coming later this month! This early, Russian supersonic fighter further completes the line of MiG fighters in DCS World. MiG-15bis, MiG-19P, MiG-21bis, and MiG-29. Named “Farmer” by NATO, the MiG-19 was the first production, Russian fighter capable of supersonic flight and comparable with American “Century Series” fighters like the F-100, F-105, F-106 and others.

The MiG-19 is a great addition to the stable of 1950s fighters, with more to come.

DCS: F-14 by Heatblur Simulations



Before the end of winter will see the release of the eagerly-awaited Tomcat! Brought to you by the same team the developed the extraordinary AJS-37 Viggen, the Tomcat will set new benchmarks in PC flight simulations. Following the initial release with the F-14B, the Heatblur team will follow that up with the F-14A version and a free USS Forrestal-class aircraft carrier!

Featuring front-seat and back-seat play for single and multiplayer, the Tomcat is a dominate fighter with the capability to also devastate ground targets.

Sharing the deck with Hornet’s DCS, World naval combat operations will take off in 2019.

DCS: F-16C Viper



Our next marquee title from the Eagle Dynamics studio will be the famous F-16C multi-role fighter! An aircraft we’ve long wanted to simulate, we are excited to bring this legendary aircraft to the skies of DCS World. The F-16C is already well into development alongside the F/A-18C, and both aircraft share significant technology that will benefit both.

Specifically, we will be offering the F-16CJ Block 50 variant that includes the HARM anti-radar missile and HARM Target System (HTS) pod, laser- and GPS-guided munitions, advanced air-to-air systems like the Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS) and AIM-9X and AIM-120 air-to-air missiles, data link systems, Sniper targeting pod, AN/APG-68 radar, and other systems.

DCS: Mi-24P Hind



We have certainly not forgotten about all the rotor-heads! Work continues the deadly Mi-24P HIND. Using many of the same systems as the Mi-8MTV2, this project is well underway and will be a great addition to the stable of DCS World helicopters.

With the advancements in our terrain technology and the ability to create much more detailed low-altitude environments, the HIND will be a joy to fly. Combining both gunship and troop-carry abilities, the Mi-24P will certainly result in outstanding missions and campaigns.

Being a two-seat aircraft, the HIND will be a particularly interesting aircraft to fly with a friend online.

DCS: P-47D Thunderbolt, DCS: de Havilland Mosquito FB Mk.VI, and DCS: Fw 190 A-8 Shrike



These three of these aircraft are well underway and we plan to release or more in 2019. With the addition of the new damage model, dynamic campaign, new World War II maps, and more units added to the World War II Assets Pack like the Ju-88, Bf 109G, C-47, A-20G, and others, DCS World War II will continue to grow and bring great new gameplay!

Other Aircraft





Other new aircraft in development for 2019 are the DCS: JF-17 by Deka Ironworks and the DCS: I-16 by OctopusG.

DCS: F/A-18C Hornet



Although not a new aircraft for 2019, the Hornet will certainly be a huge focus for us with the addition of the AGM-88 HARM, ATFLIR targeting pod, datalink and IFF systems, GPS- and INS-guided weapons, standoff weapons like Harpoon, SLAM, SLAM-ER, and Walleye, as well as continued work on the flight dynamics, navigation system, air-to-surface radar, Track While Scan and other air-to-air radar modes and sub-modes, and defensive systems.
The Hornet has been and will continue to be a massive and complex project.

Updating the Hangar, A-10C and Ka-50
Although we have a large set of new aircraft being worked on, it by no means that the older aircraft have been forgotten. Quite the contrary. Just like the recent update to the P-51D, Bf 109 K-4, Fw 190 D-9, and Spitfire LF Mk.IX, we will continue to update older products as their technology lags behind our current capabilities. The two biggest such projects being worked on for 2019 are overhauls of the cockpits and external models of the DCS: A-10C Warthog and DCS: Ka-50 Black Shark.

Hello, the office is slowly ramping back up after the Christmas and New year festivities.

Part of the final polishing and cleanup work of preparation for 1.0 is cleaning up and smoothing out some of the hiccups in the game. Many will remember FFF-266 where we talked about some of these upcoming changes and simplifications. One suggestion that came up was to adjust the belt throughput from its unfriendly 13.33 items/s.

Belt throughput is determined by 2 variables, how far the belt moves items each tick, and how much space there is between each item. There is a visual requirement that belts only move integer number of pixels every tick, so that is 1/2/3 pixels for transport belt, fast belt, express belt respectively. This means the only 'allowed' way to change transport belt throughput is by changing the spacing between the items.

The spacing currently is 9 pixels between items. The fact that each tile is 32 pixels, and that 9 is not a factor of 32, explains the odd throughput number. This spacing also leads to some undesirable behavior, such as when using the circuit network to read the belt contents sometimes the belt can fit 8 items, sometimes it can only fit 6, and the count will fluctuate between the two:



At this point it is quite obvious to reduce the spacing to 8 pixels, which is a factor of 32, and gives a nice even 15.00 items/second, which is what we have done for 0.17:



With a spacing of 8 pixels, belts now always fit exactly 8 items (4 on each side), so for instance, reading a fully compressed belt gives a reliable result:



The change overall gives a 12.5% buff to belts, provides nice round integers for calculating factory requirements, and removes a few oddities. A next step we are considering is tweaking the furnace recipes to match the belt speed, but that is a consideration for another day.

In the last few weeks I have been working on a system that allows mods to easily render geometric shapes, text and sprites in the game world. Like many modding features, the implementation of this rendering system was prompted by a modding interface request. When I first saw this request, I doubted the usefulness of adding a whole new API that needs to handle saving and rendering for just one mod author. A few months later, another mod author discovered a newly added method to create text that was only visible to one player and requested more features for it. Through further discussion with the mod author it became obvious that they were looking for a system to show some helper text and sprites to only one player. After other mod authors joined in to point out that the solutions implemented at the time were not sufficient, the idea of a script rendering system was dug out again and I picked up the task to implement it.

Of course, one does not simply invent a new system without first finding out what the system should be able to do. Here I want to thank the regulars in the #mod-making channel of the Factorio discord. They were a great help in suggesting features and always happy to answer questions about what they render in their mods. I also consulted old modding interface requests on the forums to find out what features were desired, amounting to a total of 12 requests that are now fulfilled by the new system. With this information I wrote a rough design document that listed the desired features without considering their implementation.

The current implementation of the script rendering boasts eight different object types. The basic geometric shapes being line, circle, rectangle, arc and polygon. Additionally, sprites, lights and text can be drawn. One of my main aims was to make the system as flexible as possible which I achieved by making every single property of the render objects changeable after creation. One example of this is that the size or orientation of a sprite can be changed without destroying and recreating it. This differs from the previous rendering that mods used. They would create many entity prototypes which had sprites with the desired orientation or size and then switch those out to change the orientation and size of the sprite. This frequent replacing of entities comes with a considerable performance cost which the script rendering completely eliminates.

Furthermore, the rendering objects are simply identified by numeric IDs which are much more performant to handle in Lua than LuaEntities. Another advantage of this dynamic system is that nothing in the rendering relies on the data stage. Unlike the mentioned technique of using entity prototypes, the script rendering does not need prototype data. This means that scenarios, the so called 'soft-mods', can also make full use of this new system.

https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/img/blog/fff-276-script-render.webm
https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/img/blog/fff-276-script-render.mp4

The first big point in the design document was to allow any target to be either an entity or a position. This point with, the addition of entity offsets, works beautifully in-game. Objects can be 'attached' to entities or placed at static positions. Even a combination of the two is possible if an object like a line has multiple targets. Due to the attachment to entities, the render objects are deleted when the entity is destroyed. This leads to some very useful behavior: If mods for example want to simply place some text above all their entities, they don't have to handle deleting the text when their entities are mined by the player or eaten by biters.

The second big point was conditional visibility, this means that it is possible to restrict the rendering of objects to certain forces and players. This will hopefully see use by the helper mods that prompted the implementation. This conditional visibility had also been requested in the past where it was handled as something that simply 'won't be implemented'. The main reasoning for this was the predicted performance impact of adding the player whitelist to many entities that the base game uses. This performance concern is irrelevant when using the script rendering because it is a completely separate system from the base game rendering. If you don't use mods you won't even notice that it's there and it won't impact game performance.

https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/img/blog/fff-276-script-render-2.webm
https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/img/blog/fff-276-script-render-2.mp4
In combination with other modding additions, the new render system opens a lot of interesting possibilities for mods to explore.

In general, this new system means that mods no longer have to abuse entities like beams, smoke or flying-text for rendering. This opens up a lot of possibilities of new rendering options that previously could not be considered, such as custom fonts for text or easily changeable scale and orientation of sprites. So, mods authors, please think about what rendering options would be useful for your mods and request them on the forum if they are not already implemented.

As always, let us know what you think on our forum.

Patch 2.1.0 is a complex bugfix including:
- some changes in the bite system on Akhtuba river and Tiber river to make it more realistic
- fog has been reduced on all European waterways
- fixed mistakes in current speed influence on the chum
- current speed reduced on Akhtuba and Tiber
- feeder and sinker drift fixed while rod is on rod pod
- local and global shop UI bugs fixed
- sounds bugs fixed on north-American waterways
- chum loading fixes
- miscellaneous small fixes

In the third episode of our blog series about the game, we talk about the Sacrament, the ritual conflict of Gods! Read up on it over at our community page.

Hi everyone!

It has been some time since my last update, so I wanted to keep people informed about what is happening.

Since December, 3 versions of the next update (update 4 - beta 3) have been released on the beta branch on steam.

The current beta addresses some issues and more importantly greatly improves the combat and weapon handling (changelog can be found on the #beta-changelog channel on Discord).

However, this update is a bit special because I upgraded to a new major version of the Unity engine. The use of this version is mandatory for the future as it improves the physic engine, overall stability and will be the only one receiving new updates about the input system I use (I’m mainly waiting the Unity fix about inputs which is not working when the game window is not focused).

Unfortunately, the new Unity version comes with a pretty serious issue in VR that can lead the whole computer to crash, and this problem prevents me of switching the beta to live.
With the Christmas period being over, I’m however confident that this issue will be resolved soon (hopefully this month).

In the meantime, I’m still working on the beta, and the next update (beta 4) should include an overhaul of the combat animations as well as an improved and more aggressive AI.


Most importantly, I wanted to say Thank you to everyone for your support, the game release was awesome, and I could not have expected better! The community on Discord is approaching 10k users and doesn’t stop to amaze me every day! Modders are also doing wonder with the game, I really didn’t expect this to be so quick! I wish I could talk more often on Discord, but I’m still really focused on the game itself.

The current game is only the beginning, with the release success I already increased the scope (check roadmap on Discord) and I’m happy to announce that I should get some help with a dedicated 3D artist and level designer soon 😊.

Thanks again for your support! And Best Wishes for 2019!

Cheers!
KospY

This update brings new arts and animations for all monsters, new items, various tools and commands for map edition, and a lot of bug fixes and improvements.



New edition tools are detailed in this wiki page: https://digordie.gamepedia.com/Modding_and_Mapping. Don't hesitate to complete it, or post a link to your own custom maps.

I'll now start working on a new game, and stop updating Dig or Die but for bug fixes or minor improvements. I'm not sure yet what I'll do next with Dig or Die as there are so much to do... hire a developer to work on it? find a partnership with another studio to continue it and port it to consoles (if you are one, contact me!)? Wait for some hypothetical Dig or Die 2 in order to change the game features in depth? I don't know yet.

As for my next game, it will be totally different from Dig or Die. I can't be sure if I'll manage to do something great, but I do think you'll find it very interesting, and really worth to work on it! I'll post something about it when it's time, but if you want to be sure not to miss it, register to my little mailing list (no spam, something like 1 mail per year): http://eepurl.com/cIQ0VD

Thanks again to all of you for your support during those last few years!

And here is the complete change log:



General

- New arts and anims for monsters and bosses (almost all, not yet complete)
- New item: Alarm. Flashing light with sound, when powered with a signal
- New item: Distance Sensor. Detect units around it (3 modes: green for players, red for monsters, blue for both). Added those 3 modes to the proximity sensor.
- New item: Composite Door
- New item: Mega Health Potion. Heal 100% of HP, cooldown 15s
- New item: Pheromones Potion. Attract monsters from further away
- New item: Invisibility Potion. Canceled if shoot or use item. Visually, player is almost invisible.
- New item: Ultimate Rebreather
- Item modification: Stealth Bracelet, changed from previous Invisibility Bracelet. Player is half-transparent. Monsters have more difficulty to find player (during the day): distance to detect, and to lose track, is reduced (half). Cancels only if shooting (player can dig). Usage 30s, cooldown 60s.
- Drone: it now stays in inventory, is called when you activate it. Recipe modified so they now are updates. Added transparency to AI speech bubble.
- Minimap: button to toggle a x2 zoom, and display the % of exploration
- Menu "CUSTOM GAMES" renamed into "OTHER WORLDS"
- Improve monthers pathfinding, to climb (especially platforms)
- Add localization in Traditional Chinese
- Update localization in Simplified Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Korean, Polish, Brazilian, Russian, Spanish, Japanese

Map edition tools

- Added an empty map in local files /DigOrDie_Data/SteamingAssets/Empty World. Work In Progress, various things left to do: manage monsters areas, bosses, strange rocks, minimap clearing.
- Clock day/night areas display now dynamic whatever the day/night durations, perfect precision now
- "Delete" key to remove items
- Made strange rock area dynamic, build those rocks anywhere with the Creative Brush.
- Organic rock heart is now dynamic too ; it regens a bit differently, player can "move" it. It can also be healed once killed with the Brush tool.
- If you spawn a boss with the Monster Gun, in Dev Mode (m_devMode=true in Creative Mode), it will set its lair/respawn area at this new position.
- Automatic character skin reset (open character window) if change of host (if map shared to someone else, even in solo)
- F4 debug : display the currently (daily) spawn monster
- Add basic rifle to recipes (useful for map edition)
- Added Scrap Metals recipe to ultimate autobuilder (useful for map edition)
- Adds an Auto-Builder Ultimate when activating the Dev Mode.
- New param: m_checkMinerals. Add some minerals (gold, etc.) at loading if not enough found (if players dug everything). True by default.
- New param: Dev Mode (m_devMode). Give invincibility, fast travel/fly/noclip with numeric keypad arrows, time change with PageUp/PageDown/Home/End keys.
- New param: m_dynamicSpawn. To make monsters spawn depending of the surrounding blocks & background (example: if crytals, spawn ants) like in Terraria (see wiki for more info).
- New param: m_rainY. Set rain/cloud altitude (880 in main world)
- New param: m_fastEvaporationYMax. Water evaporates very fast below (280 in main world).
- New params: m_sunLightYMin & m_sunLightYMax. Altitude where sky become caverns (no more sun light). Useful for map edition, as it changes some of the spawns. 600 & 665 in main world
- New param: m_lavaPressureBottomCycle. Lava altitude at the lowest point of its cycle. 2 in main world
- New command: /clearminimap. Clear Minimap (for map edition)
- New command: /clearbosses. To kill all bosses and delete their lair/respawn area
- New command: /clearminimapfog to clear the minimap fog (useful for map edition)
- New command: /clearkills to clear the killed monsters list (keep firefly & hounds) (useful for map edition)
- New command: /cleardaycounter to reset the day counter.

Bug Fix

- Prevent getting several similiar Hazardous Events following each other
- Fixed Meteor Shower and Earthquake for clients
- Fixed monsters spawning from altitude (and crashing stupidly)
- Ultimate Autobuilder don't consume items anymore when they are available
- Minimap : fixed bug when near map borders
- Fixed sync of blocks destroyed by grenade launcher
- Fixed other players name highlight (now only if item is beinbg dragged)
- Fixed bug that let projectiles go through walls when quick saving (+ other collisions issues when quick saving)
- Fixed some texts not updating when changing language (game creation & lobbies screen)
- Monster Gun: bosses spawn with right clic are now aggressive
- Monster Gun: Spawn monsters with Monster Gun are not killed anymore at loading.
- Fixed bug (at loading) with lava cycle skip & organic rock kill
- Fixed an issue with the input field while saving game
- Fixed bug that prevented infiltration when water pressure was > 83

Balance

- Potion regen: +150% instead of +200%
- Potion armor (-30% damages ) applied before armor (so more effective)
- Critics damage : x3 instead of x2
- Plasma Sniper: 35 damages instead of 45, but 25% of critics chance instead of 5%
- Armor Potion now reduce damage by 30%
- Precision Potion: 20% more chance instead of 30%
- Increased drowing monster damage (2+ 5% of max HP)
- Fishes damages in air are now the same as drowning monsters
- Under The Sea mode: modify shape of the bottom of the sea to let player go closer to the gas rock islands
- Under The Sea mode: MadCrab easier to find (bigger lair)
- Under the Sea: spawning zone for T3 monster a bit higher so players can reach the cavern ceiling more easily.
- Default mode: granit caverns a bit longer, more connected
- Base Defense mode: move all bosses (now better hidden)
- Demon aim better when player is running
- Regeneration Potion ticks duration changed. One tick every 1.6s (still 150% of hp healed over 60s - so heal ticks of 1/2/3/4 hp depending of difficulty)
- Grenade Launcher cannot damage T4 & T5 rocks
- All electric components recipes produce 2 instead of 1
- HP Regen Potion cost modified (3 blue flower instead of 4)
- Precision Potion cost modified (7 High Radioactive Blood instead of 10)
- Armor Potion cost modified (7 High Radioactive blood instead of 10, no more dead plants)
- Speed Potion cost modified (now 3 Deep Cave Tree Seeds and 7 Highly Radioactive Blood)
- Invisibility potion recipe change (deadly blood)
- Mega potion recipe change (build 1 instead of 3 - change for big potions too)
- Sapphire emit a bit of light

Minor

- New Command: /killme
- Crafting group: "minerals / materials" now together
- Add contrast & modify colors of steel platforms and composite walls
- AI: improve bubbles colors to be more readable at day & night
- AI message when near a rare mineral
- AI message to explain there is no normal loot at night
- Help: says we can place dirt but not rock; and that we can drag&drop items onto the other players names
- Update english localization

Hi all,

Tentatively we announce V1 and bring the live game and VR inline with the Switch game release.

We are sorry it has taken us longer than we expected but now it is inline and the VR is radically improved.