Oct 3, 2019

AI War 2 - x-4000 (Chris Park)

Release notes here.

This one has a lot of little UI improvements, many of which center around hotkeys.

Some of the sidebar hotkeys are more natural now (F for fleets, etc).
A number of the controls in the controls configuration menu have been recategorized or clarified.
You can now hold the R key while looking at ship stats in order to see either the strengths or weaknesses of that ship type versus other ship types. This is a preliminary sort of thing, but it's something a lot of people have been wanting and getting started with it is good. Big thanks to Asteroid for that!
The mercenaries have been renamed to Outguard instead, and coming up before too long we're going to be changing how they work. Basically to make them both more thematic (end of the world for humans we'd see more natural cooperation, seems like), and something that people use more frequently.
Ships should hopefully no longer wiggle back and forth when they're doing slight kiting movements.
You can now tell if an AI has a warp gate adjacent to a planet of yours based on the thickness of the line between your planet and theirs.

Overall this was a pretty small release, but it lays the groundwork for more stuff coming soon.

Repeat Notice: Tutorial and Scenario Designers Wanted!

We're going to be working on our own tutorials based on this system, but I'd definitely love to see a really robust number of scenarios from other folks, too.

Everybody has a different perspective, and maybe you want to teach some specific tactic or even set up kind of a small contained puzzle-like challenge cage-match with 5 planets against the dark spire and nanocaust with a quest you design with unusual victory conditions.

I think that sort of thing is just super fun, and it's a way to play the game in a more bite-sized fashion. Some of those sorts of things aren't even really tutorials, they're more advanced challenges or puzzles.

But anyway, the tutorials system is a pretty robust framework that allows for all sorts of different scenario designs that I'd love to see people really lean into. I've been explicitly trying to make this as easy as possible for non-coders to do -- all you need is a text editor -- and the idea of seeing what creative things people come up with to both teach and test players is exciting.

It's more or less the same idea behind modding, where people add various map types or ship types or whatever else, except this time it's custom scenarios for teaching or testing.

Other Fixes And Improvements

There are a number of bugfixes and balance tweaks that seemed to be the highest-priority items that people had brought to our attention. Thanks to Badger on the bulk of those. And the build menu now has icons thanks to Asteroid!

More to come soon. Enjoy!

Problem With The Latest Build?

If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options. You can always choose most_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back. Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc. Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire.

The Usual Reminders

Quick reminder of our new Steam Developer Page. If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do.

Also: Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games? It doesn't have to be much more detailed than a thumbs up, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen. Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support.

Enjoy!

Chris

Oct 3, 2019

Update v.1.2 - Level Design and More Localizations

Knightin'+ - Wolod

Greetings!

More than a month passed since the last update. So I had more than enough time to watch lots of videos and streams about Knightin'+. Guess that any game developer likes to watch somebody playing his or her game. Besides having fun, it's a great way to gather feedback. Do you see where this is going?

Right, it's time to announce new update 1.2! Besides lots of tiny tweaks, fixes, improvements and even an ability to enter cheat codes with a gamepad there are 2 things that I want to tell about.

Level Design Improvements

First of all I noticed that people have troubles on several floors because of the level design flaws. Lots of changes were made but only 2 major ones deserve to be told about in detail.

Floor 1-1 was designed in a way that player was able to find a puzzle room before finding the solution. I thought that it will stimulate players to explore the whole floor, but they seem to be more eager to just brute-force the solution. Oh well, who could have thought? So sarcasm aside, I changed the layout of floor 1-1 in a way that player won't be able to find a puzzle before the solution. And you know what? I'm pretty satisfied with the result.

Floor 2-1 had a room with lots of bear traps and a checkpoint that confused lots of people. They thought that it's impossible to walk around the traps. Yep, the ability to walk behind the columns is not very obvious because of the distorted perspective. So I changed the layout of this room too. It won't confuse anybody ever. Muhaha!

Also players with gamepads kept missing the reset puzzle control hints. After a little research I realized that they didn't recognize the icon of the Select button. That's why icon was changed to look like the one on Xbox controller because it's the most common one. Yes, it's a tiny change that probably doesn't deserve to be mentioned here. But, man, I had to load this weight off my mind!

New Localizations

And here are some good news for German and Japanese people. Yep, Knightin'+ was translated to your languages, guys!

Thanks for Reading!

Well, I don't have much more to say. Hope that you'll enjoy the new update. Just trying my best to make Knightin'+ a better experience for all of us. Keep being awesome and have a nice play!

Oct 3, 2019

Patch Notes v0.8.06b6

Out of Space - $_Shiva_$

Hi everyone! In the past few weeks we’ve had a lovely increase in the number of players and, therefore, of bug reports and feedbacks. We also took some time to reevaluate our experience at PAX West and set some goals for this week’s patch! So here is what we’ve done and what will be available at Brazil Game Show next week! As usual, items tagged as [COM] were changed based on community feedback.

Screeshot from 闪球

COMBAT EVOLVED (PART 1)

Time and again we see ourselves thinking of ways to make the interaction with Aliens during a game better, because right now we feel like opening a room with two or 10 bug plays out pretty much the same. With that in mind, all of the following changes were made to make the act of dealing with aliens more impactful, interesting and challenging, although we still got some way to go on that front.

Now the Mop can only hit one enemy per swing;
[COM] Hitting Aliens now knocks them back a considerable distance in a somewhat variable direction;
Added a new visual effect for hitting aliens with the mop;
The Dog only stuns one enemy per bark, but only spends half of the energy he used to before this patch (it is still OP, though);
The Dog has a small delay between barks so it doesn't become a stun machine gun.

ABRA CADABRA

We’ve redesigned how the players interact with the doors in the game so they have more control over them and get less frustrated in general.

[COM] Doors can now be closed even in a powered room. They will remain closed or opened until the players interact with them again;
[COM] Opening a door automatically frees the players from the grip from now on;
Interacting with a powerless door while it is open will cause it to close, just like a powered one (just to be a bit more consistent);
[COM] Players can now interact with doors while holding items, causing the items to be dropped on the floor automatically.

FROM DIRT WE COME

The players can now save others from the Cocoon state by dropping them in the recycler. It is way less gory than you might imagine, though. The Cocooned player will come back to its original form dirty and the process will get both the Recycler and the player using it dirty as well. It is definitely not a clean process, but it will get the job done.

This mainly avoids early deaths that result in a lot of waiting for the cocooned players and a lot of working to the ones trying to revive them. And also satisfies the sadistic ones among our player base a little bit haha.

CHANGES AND ENHANCEMENTS

[COM] The “Unusual Ways” Achievements are now all unlocked at the same time instead of following a progression that prevented people from trying to beat more than one in a same match, making it easier for us to add more achievements in the future;
Shower now heals 10% of both Hunger and Fatigue to avoid falling for any of these during or right after using the Shower;
[COM] Time to get cleaned in the Shower reduced by half, since it was clearly the most time consuming appliance in the game;
[COM] When players fall from Hunger or Fatigue, the interface will now only show the main cause for the fall, to avoid confusing messages;
After falling, the stat balloon will now animate to reinforce the sense of urgency;
[COM] Eating food after falling from hunger now recovers two times more for a short period of time, to avoid getting stuck in the almost dying state for too long;
[COM] Cocooned players now have a shower balloon on them to better communicate how to save that player;
Trash bags don’t come back after being lost in space (we didn’t want to encourage this behaviour, but it was not fun finding trash bags on the porch all the time D: )
[COM] A small area of the floor is cleaned if a player passes over it (to avoid multiple players dying from the same hidden dirt spot in a given room);
[COM] Added a double check before making a player become dirty, so ridiculously small cells of dirt won’t hit players running through them;
[COM] From now on, only Aliens can destroy plugged-in batteries by “attacking” the sockets. Other types of dirt sources like the Shaft and Exploding Eggs will only make the battery drop to the floor intact;
TV sales will now be always visible, regardless of where the players are in the ship;
[COM] Controller vibrations got reworked to better represent danger and send different signals to different situations;
TV sales will now be smarter, and have an increased chance of giving discounts on things that will help the players at any given moment;
[COM] Some appliances were slightly reduced in size to facilitate traversal in rooms full of them;
The end game screen now shows the amount of credits spent instead of the the former “credits left” counter.

BUG FIXES

Appliances

TEST: The Sink needs power to work now (we need to know what you think of that change, so please tell us after playing);
[COM] Fixed issues where aliens would, sometimes, become invisible after leaving a refrigerator;
Refrigerator now only shows the first item when it becomes powerless and opens its door;
[COM] Recycler’s animation should no longer continue playing long after the interaction with it is finished;
[COM] Enemies no longer get a furniture dirty if it’s unreachable, which should prevent some “phantom attacks” that caused furniture to get dirt for no apparent reason;
[COM] Fixed issue that caused the Recycler to stop working when a player passed out while using it;
[COM] Network delay should no longer cause players to be able to use and deconstruct appliances at the same time (this should solve most of the Shower problems).

General

[COM] FIXED rooms that were not connected to the rest of the ship (thanks for the patience with this, we know it was pretty bad);
[COM] Items no longer clip through the refrigerator when it’s door is closed;
[COM] Fixed issues that prevented online players to grab buckets as soon as they were bought (and just might have fixed the similar issue happening at the start of the match);
Fixed issue that opened the settings menu with no options selected;
[COM] We granted the Cleaning Robot the ability to clean under furnitures, so it won’t get stuck trying to clan an unreachable spot anymore;
[COM] Fixed issue where the bucket would clean things for the player using it, but not for the other online players;
Fixed issue that caused some rooms not to get dirty after a long time inactive;
[COM] Fixed issue where trying to clean a door with the bucket would not work reliably;
[COM] Doors now have less space for simultaneous egg spawns;
Aliens are no longer deleted when they go to the porch and get close to the edges;
[COM] Fixed issue that prevented some appliances from being deconstructed unless the battery was removed from the room;
[COM] Eggs exploding animation no longer continues after throwing water at them.

Kinda fixed

Doors shouldn’t have to be cleaned twice due to desync on online matches anymore;
Cleaning players in the porch should now work properly right from the start of a match;
Items should no longer get stuck inside players on online matches due to desync;
The game should no longer freeze sometimes when getting back to the menu after a match;
It is way harder to break the recycler by deconstructing it and trying to use is simultaneously;
Several changes were made to the navigation mesh to drastically reduce the frequency of invisible walls (none of them worked :/ ).

If you want to know more or participate testing features before release, please join us on our official Discord Server .