Nov 1, 2019

Planet Zoo - Frontier Developments

Hello Zookeepers!

We can't wait to share Planet Zoo with you in just a few days! On 5 November we are launching globally and you will finally be able to play through the entire story in Career Mode, develop your global zoo network in Franchise Mode, test your zoo management skills with Challenge Mode, and unleash your limitless creativity in Sandbox Mode!

You're probably as excited as we are, and we know many of you have been asking what time the game will go live. Today we're happy to share the global Planet Zoo release times with you, so you know exactly when you can start playing:

Los Angeles 4:00 AM PST
Calgary 5:00 AM MST
Chicago 6:00 AM CST
Mexico City 6:00 AM CST
New York 7:00 AM EST
Toronto 7:00 AM EST
Rio de Janeiro 9:00 AM BRT
London 12:00 PM GMT
Paris 1:00 PM CET
Athens 2:00 PM EET
Cape Town 2:00 PM SAST
Moscow 3:00 PM MSK
Istanbul 3:00 PM TRT
Dubai 4:00 PM GST
New Dehli 5:30 PM IST
Bangkok 7:00 PM ICT
Beijing 8:00 PM CST
Seoul 9:00 PM KST
Tokyo 9:00 PM JST
Brisbane 10:00 PM AEST
Sydney 11:00 PM AEDT
Auckland 1:00 AM NZDT (Wednesday 6 November)

*Please note release is global and pre-loading is not possible.

We've also got an update on Beta saved games progress as well as your Steam Workshop items. As mentioned in the Beta Information post, we previously weren't sure that your saved games would function on launch day. We're now happy to report that your Career Mode - Scenario 1 save file will still be valid, however for the best play experience we do recommend starting over again – whilst we have tested many different saves we cannot 100% guarantee all save files will work. Franchise Mode save files will no longer function, so you are free to start over your new Franchise!

In terms of the Planet Zoo Steam Workshop blueprints that were uploaded during the Beta, they will stay on the Steam Workshop and should all work in-game. Beta blueprints are marked with a "Beta" tag on the Workshop. If your blueprint doesn’t function in game, it may be because some of the assets have been updated and might need re-positioning.

Lastly, for those who have played the Beta, you will automatically be credited 500 Conservation Credits to your account as a thank you for pre-ordering the Deluxe Edition and providing us with such amazing feedback.

As per our recently posted November Streaming Schedule, we will be counting down to launch from 10:30 AM GMT in our official Launch Livestream - be sure to tune in for some chats with the developers and awesome prizes!

See you soon!

Nov 1, 2019

Patch 01.33 (32726)

Switchblade - RiozziV1

Hotfix Patch 01.33

Fixed issue with Matchmaking where players were not always joining a lobby.

Hotfix Patch 01.32 (32536)

Fixed issue where players late-joining into existing matches.
Fixed issue where players did not roll over into a second match on the end-game screen.
Fixed crash when playing as a party

Patch 01.31 (32390)

XP Changes

Eliminations now earn XP. The base amount of XP earned from an elimination is 150 XP, which is then scaled based on damage share and underdog bonus.
Healing allies now earns more XP. This has been increased to 28 XP for every 200 health restored.
Dealing damage to vehicles and Power Cores has been reduced to 10 XP for every 200 damage dealt.

Developer Comment:“This balancing update aims to address the issues identified in Patch 1.29 with players levelling up much slower than expected. Statistically, matches in Patch 1.29 are more balanced in terms of damage output and margin of victory, however, time to level-up and match length were both significantly increased. There was also an unexpected knock-on that XP Stations suddenly became a much more valuable source of XP, giving teams who consistently capture XP Stations a huge advantage. By reintroducing Elimination XP and increasing XP gain from healing, early-game levelling should now be quicker and the importance of XP Stations reduced.” - David Deeble - Game Designer

Vehicle Changes

Aim assist has been refined and reduced for all machine gun and cannon weapons (Primary weapons). Crosshairs have been adjusted to reflect this on the following vehicles:
- Berserker (Primary and Super weapons)
- Sniper Prince
- Electron
- Kamikaze
- Flaming Blade
- Thunder Pulse
- Sundog
- Safeguard
- Fog Hog
- Goofer
- Mob Buddy
- Fortress (Super weapon only)
Crosshairs have been refined on all shotgun weapons to more accurately show weapon spread. Vehicles affected include:
- Fortress
- Vampire
- Sniper Prince 'shotgun storm' super weapon
Crosshairs have been refined on laser and tether primary weapons to clearly indicate weapon lock-on radius. Vehicles affected include
- Tiny Giant
- Healing Hippo
- Porcupine
All missiles and homing weapons reticles have been refined.
- All secondary and super abilities with homing now show a yellow reticle to indicate lock-on.
- All primary vehicles with homing now show a yellow diamond to indicate lock-on. Vehicles affected include
  - Sidewinder
  - Angel
Further crosshair refinements include the following:
- Damage indicator is now a small set of triangles surrounding all crosshairs
- A successful elimination is now indicated by a skull that appears in the center of the crosshair
- Successful healing is now indicted by a green cross that appears at the center of the crosshair
- Ability duration and positive auras are now indicated by an orange power bar beneath the crosshair
- Negative auras and damage-over-time are now indicated by a red power bar beneath the crosshair
Aim assist system now uses multiple collision primitives that better represent the shape of the vehicle
Flaming Blade's speed boost audio has been re-added.

Game Play Changes

Porcupine Mines can no longer be targeted by allied healing tethers.
XP Towers now react instantly when driving through them.

Balancing Changes

Gravitron
- Increased base healing output on primary to 5 (25hps).
- Decreased cooldown on Heal Blast to 22s (from 26s).
- Heal Blast now receives a -1s reduction per level (from -2s).
- Added passive ability "Self-Repair". After not taking damage for 4.4s, the Gravitron will now heal itself back to full health at a rate of 20hps.
Sundog
- Reduced Fusion Core base damage to 5 (from 8).
- Max damage is now set per ability upgrade level and has a 2x scale - base max damage has now been reduced to 200 (from 500).
- Projectile speed while dealing damage has been reduced to 700 (from 800).
Berserker
- Reduced base damage on Berserker's Molotov Shells by -25% (40 to 30).

Known Issues

Hall of Champions
- Camera can clip into podiums in Hall of Champions.
UI
- The selection cursor can disappear when if the player purchases an item and presses "Esc" to back out of the confirmation pop-up.
  - Pressing "Esc" again or using the mouse will rectify this issue.
Tutorials
- Lighting is too bright on Taunt screen on Tutorial 2 "Game Rules".
Game Play
- Mobs overtaking other mobs can clip scenery, which destroys them.
- Support bots can occasionally be seen sitting in areas of the map healing each other.
Audio
- Engine sounds occasionally stop playing.
Localisation
- Multiple strings in game are not fully localised.

Nov 1, 2019

Trial Rising - November Update

Trials® Rising - Ubi-MrDrPink

Greetings Riders,

The next patch for Trials Rising is releasing on Monday November 4th. Below you can find the change list for this patch.

STABILITY

[All Platforms] Squashed a bug that could cause a crash if a UGC track is loaded before the thumbnail downloads on Track Central
[PC] Fixed an issue that could cause a crash on the splash screen after TU6
[PC] Squashed a bug that could cause a crash when loading a track from the first league on the profile’s first playthrough
[PC] Fixed an issue that could cause the game to become unresponsive when scrolling through the bike selection menu with the mouse wheel

[All Platforms] Split times are now visible when playing Track Central tracks
[All Platforms] Various localization & text spill fixes
[All Platforms] Fixed poses & animations that were missing on some platforms
[All Platforms] Fixed a redirection issue after purchasing the Turtle or Alpaca bikes
[All Platforms] Fixed incorrect thumbnails for Alpaca frames in Bike Store
[All Platforms] Fix for missing parts for Fun Bikes in the Bike Store
[All Platforms] Fixed several customization items that had the incorrect rarity icon
[All Platforms] Added/fixed filters related to expansion pack tracks in Private MP & Party Mode
[All Platforms] Fixed various incorrect or misaligned thumbnails in the Bike & Rider Stores
[All Platforms] Squashed a bug that could display incorrect search filters after re-entering the search menu in Track Central
[All Platforms] Fixed a bug that could cut off Skill Game instructions during a race if they are over 160 characters
[All Platforms] Fixed a bug that centered and cut off track names on Track Central tiles if they are too long to fit in the tile
[All Platforms] Squashed a bug that could show a new sticker notification when no new stickers are available
[All Platforms] Fixed an issue that could display incorrect values on the result screen of custom skill games if they use a data source for the primary score
[All Platforms] Fixed missing UGC track poster in bike selection screen of Party Mode
[All Platforms] Fixed various camera clipping issues in the Rider & Bike Stores
[All Platforms] Season 2 headlights are now visible for all compatible bikes in the Bike Store
[All Platforms] Squashed a bug that could display incorrect time information in the Activity Feed
[All Platforms] Euro Semi Pro: Highland Fling menu was not displaying all tracks in that league
[PC] Added Steam Controller button map in replays
[PC] Squashed a bug that could cause players to get stuck on the rating screen after playing UGC from the World Map
[PC] Fixed inputs displayed when using a wireless Xbox One controller

EDITOR

[All Platforms] The date a track was last saved will now be visible when loading/saving/managing custom track files
[All Platforms] Fixed incorrect default medal times
[All Platforms] Squashed a bug that caused the emitter tool to initially emit too many objects
[All Platforms] Fixed an issue that prevented the emitter tool from emitting glued groups of objects
[All Platforms] Fixed a bug that allowed players to skip checkpoints when playing the track during the sharing process
[All Platforms] Squashed a bug that could cause editor controls and UI to be temporarily disabled after returning from test mode
[All Platforms] Fixed a bug that caused UI to disappear if the player pressed R3 while in the object selection menu
[All Platforms] Randomize Color option has been fixed for a variety of objects
[All Platforms] Fusion Finish gate & Finish Gate Base objects were not casting shadows
[PC] Squashed a bug that could recolor objects if they were highlighted when saving the track
[PC] Fixed an issue that could cause the editor to become unresponsive if the player backs out of the sharing process during the test run phase

TRACKS

[All Platforms] Fixed some missing collisions on Amazon Warrior
[All Platforms] Access to some Fun Bikes removed from some tracks that were found to be impossible to pass
[All Platforms] Fixed an issue that could cause physics objects to not activate when playing a track after viewing a replay

STORE

[All Platforms] Fixed an issue that could prevent all items from being awarded when purchasing a bundle
[All Platforms] Fixed an issue that could cause players to lose Acorns if online connection was lost while purchasing a bike

CUSTOMIZATION

[All Platforms] Fixed clipping & distortion issues with various customization items

SHARING

[PC] Fixed a bug that could prevent players from sharing custom tracks or gear due to an inappropriate language warning even if no inappropriate language was present

ACHIEVEMENTS/TROPHIES

[All Platforms] Platinum medals earned on Stadium Finals are now counted towards Platinum Deposit Achievement/Trophy

GRAPHICS

[All Platforms] Dirt decals were not displaying properly on the left side wheels of the Crawler

TRACK CENTRAL

[All Platforms] 50 track limit removed from Favorites feed
[All Platforms] Already played tracks will not appear on the main page of Track Central

MISC

[PC] Fixed controller vibration when playing with a Dualshock 4 controller
[All Platforms] Squashed a bug that allowed the player to grab the surface of water planes during gameplay as if it were a solid object

UBISOFT CLUB

[All Platforms] Fixed missing localizations for Weekly Challenges
[All Platforms] Fixed incorrect time remaining counter on Weekly Challenges
[PC] Incorrect icons removed from weekly challenges
[PC] Fixed Turbo Pipe not appearing for 5 coins in the shop once redeemed from Ubisoft Club
[PC] Fixed missing notifications for Weekly Challenge completion & prize collecting

Our full patch notes list for the November update can be found here

Nov 1, 2019

Time to hunt those mutants down...

Posthuman: Sanctuary - Mighty Box

A much awaited update is here! There's so much work we've put in since the last update that it's difficult to list everything, but here are the salient points:

We've added a large amount of content to the game in this one - there are a LOT of new encounters for you to explore, tons of difficult choices to make.
We've also made major overhauls to some of the buggiest parts of the game, like the inventory management. You should find the game runs much more smoothly with fewer oddities and bugs occurring.
The starting characters have been revised, generally made stronger, so the game is easier at the beginning. We're not sure how the majority of you will feel about this change, but please do let us know.
Apart from adding more non-combat encounters, we have reviewed and cleaned up the 'old' ones. Those which yielded items, or trade have been tested thoroughly and fixed where broken.
In combat we now allow multiple dice to be re-rolled when a character has a high enough mind stat. Each die may still only be re-rolled once, and the complement of 'mind' re-rolls can be used over one entire turn (i.e. including in your opponent's action, if you still have any remaining from your action).
Combat now yields more experience points.

After the good news, a little bit of bad news is inevitable, but it's not like it's the (post-) apocalypse, or anything:

We have updated the version of the game engine that we are using, which makes the game run better. However, in this version we noticed that on Windows, if you do not have the Windows Media Feature Pack installed (i.e. if you do not have Media Player, usually when you have the 'N' variant of the OS, like Windows 10 N), the game crashes when starting a new game as soon as it tries to play the intro. We're working on a fix, but in the meantime, you can install the Media Feature Pack from the Microsoft website pertinent to your OS version. Sorry about this, but this wasn't happening in our previous version of the game engine (the video simply used to remain blank, with the "Skip" button visible and functional at the bottom right of the screen) - the crash is new and we only realised it was happening a few days before releasing this update.
Due to some of the changes we made, there is a change that the game might crash at some points when you use an 'old' save game form a previous version. It may not happen at all for most of you, and in fact this was the reason we didn't outright reject older saved games. Starting a new game will prevent any of these crashes from happening.

And that's all regarding this update. In other news, we welcome to our studio Andrea, who has already been hard at work to make this update possible.

Now what are you waiting for? Venture forth into the apocalypse...

Nov 1, 2019

Friday Blog 124 - The Three Filters

Colony Survival - Pipliznl

Work on mod support has continued. In the unreleased dev build, it's now possible to have multiple mods installed and to select specific ones to use per world. This makes it a lot easier to switch between modded and unmodded worlds, and to combine multiple mods. At the moment, this functionality exists only in the server, we've still got to add new UI elements to the regular in-game menu.

Zun did a couple of highly technical things this week, but.... they're highly technical. It's important but hard to explain. But there is something else we've been discussing for a longer time, and we think we can decently explain that!

We're always listening to our community, but there are common suggestions that we seem to ignore, or at least, that we're not working on. The steps that an idea has to go through to be implemented can be pretty difficult. We think it can be best explained by a concept of three filters, or three 'lenses', that all 'distort' an idea and affect the end result. Here are these three filters/lenses:

Fullscreen

Lens One: Interpreting your Experience

It's easy to notice when something is wrong. It takes less than a second to conclude that a car, or a house, or a painting is ugly. It's equally easy to conclude that something tastes bad. But explaining why exactly something is ugly or wrong, and detailing which steps would fix the problem, is a lot harder. Why a specific individual subjectively likes or dislikes something is a very complicated subject, and it's hard to communicate about it accurately.

So a lot of feedback that we receive is pretty 'raw' and relatively unspecific, and it takes 'processing' on our side to figure out the exact problem and potential solutions. For example, in update 0.4.0 we added quite a lot of content to the science system. Players kept suggesting a hierarchal tech tree, something you'd see in games like Civilization. We were opposed to that, because it would make the tech tree harder to change, and it's going to need a lot of change before we leave Early Access.

It took us a while to realize that we had to do some interpreting. We should not have read it literally as "the game lacks a hierarchal tech tree". We should have understood that it meant something like "the current science system is unclear and it should be more intuitive". We spent a couple of hours working on it, we added clear labels and separations between different categories (available, unavailable, completed) and we applied a black-and-white filter to unavailable science. Since that update, the "hierarchal tech tree" suggestion has all but disappeared!

Source

Lens Two: Checking Relevancy to Target Audience

During World War II, using airplanes for mass bombing was a relatively new strategy. Lots of bombers were shot down, and engineers tried to optimize their survivability. They analyzed where bombers were hit when they returned from bombing missions, and were considering to add armor to these areas. These areas can be seen in the image above. Pretty smart!

Until statistician Abraham Wald thought about it. It's hard to aim accurately at planes flying at high altitudes with 1940s tech. All parts of the plane were probably hit pretty evenly. But a direct hit to the cockpit or the engine would have a much more catastrophic impact than a hit to the edge of a wing. Critically hit bombers would not return to allied territory for a thorough damage inspection, so only bombers hit in less important areas would be included in the analysis. This is called 'survivorship bias'.

So Wald gave the opposite advice: don't add armor to the areas that seem to get hit all the time, add armor to the areas that always seem to be unscathed! They are vital to the survivability of the plane.

We have got to keep this advice in mind. Only a small minority of players writes reviews, leaves comments or shares their opinion on Discord. These are the "survivors" that we notice - but how many were 'shot down' somewhere along the way? People who would've loved the gameplay but were turned off by their first impressions, people who tried the game for an hour but didn't "get it", people who happily played for dozens of hours but don't care about blogs and surveys. How different are they from the people who "survived" to the survey or Discord?

In recent surveys, "better tutorials" received a very unenthusiastic response. A large majority voted for the "low" and "very low priority" options. We believe it's too easy to conclude that a better tutorial is indeed not that valuable. Those players who would have most benefitted from a tutorial are probably the ones who have the lowest chance of sticking around and participating in surveys.

So we've got to keep in mind - who is giving comments, who is answering the survey, and to what degree do they reflect the audience we're trying to reach?

Lens Three: Technical Difficulty

Every feature has a cost. In development time and in performance. Both are limited, so we've constantly got to weigh whether what we're doing and choosing is worth the expected improvement.

How much development time something costs can be highly unintuitive. Some things that are very easy in real life are very hard in tech, and vice versa. If you want to give the walls of your living room a different color, it will take many hours of work in real life while a similar task is often accomplished in seconds if you do it digitally. The best chess players of the world have been consistenly losing to computers for more than twenty years, while a four year old child is still better at holding a conversation than the most advanced Artificial Intelligence of 2019.

Zun has pretty much written a custom engine for Colony Survival. I'd say it's highly optimized: it can run on pretty old hardware, and you can have lots of colonists and monsters without lag on regular hardware. It's highly flexible and easily customizable in certain areas, while it's rigid and limited in others. Some things that seem easy aren't, while other things that seem hard, aren't either.

One special technical complication for Colony Survival is the server/client split. When you're joining an online server that somebody else runs, you're only using the client. If you're playing a singleplayer world, the game sneakily launches its own server in the background. But a lot of things that you'd expect to be relatively simple, are actually separated between a client component and a server component that have to communicate between each other. The client is relatively dumb - it doesn't even know whether a colonist is part of your colony or not, nor does it know where a colonist is going. It just waits to receive that info from the server. We're considering to add such info in UI elements and tooltips, but the server/client split requires us to add additional steps: first the client has to ask the server, the server has to process the request and send information back, and then the client has to handle that information.

So this adds another layer of complication. An idea can sound brilliant and be widely appreciated by the entire audience, but if we don't expect to be able to get it work decently within a reasonable timeframe, we've got to ignore/postpone the idea...

Conclusion

We hope this makes clear how hard it is for a random suggestion to become the thing we're working on, especially if it's a big feature that requires a lot of development time. I struggle with the exact same problem: I'm pretty sure at least 4 out of every 5 suggestions I make is shot down by Zun and/or Vobbert :) But the fact that we're not working on your exact suggestion doesn't mean we're not listening - we're constantly monitoring how people react to both in-game and potential features and callibrating our priorities accordingly. So please keep sharing your feedback, it's valuable and definitely influences the direction of the game!

Bedankt voor het lezen :D

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