Nov 20, 2019

"When the Past was Around - prologue" is out for FREE!

A Raven Monologue - slashgear29

Good day townsfolk
Watchers of the Raven
Dreamers of the city
Hopes of the creators

We sent to you this message
Informing another dreams for you to conquer
But it's not a tale of life and death
For it's a tale of something much crueler ... love

This is the story of Edda, a girl in her early 20s
Like anyone in her age, she’s lost
She lost her way in the journey to achieve her dreams
She lost her way in the journey to find love

That until she met The Owl

The man that would help her burn her passion,
the man that would help her find the spark in a relationship,
and also the man that would teach her about heartbreak.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1170640/When_The_Past_Was_Around__Prologue/
Join the journey of Edda and The Owl in When the Past was Around - prologue
Available without fee as we communicate awkwardly now

And if you enjoyed the story of Edda
Do help build our dream ... our wish
By wishlisting the rest of her story
For your wish, is what drives us forward to create

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1164050/When_The_Past_Was_Around/

Nov 20, 2019

Still There is available now!

Still There - shonana

The stars have aligned and we are thrilled to announce that Still There is available today on Steam! We are so happy and proud to share this experience with all of you.

https://youtu.be/_1WS85PqAOU
Still There is more than a simple game to us – it has had a profound impact on our lives. It has been the fulfilment of a promise that was told to the child version of ourselves, and has been an important test of our own feelings.

It has required many compromises and struggles and has, without a doubt, left its mark on us. Parts of us will always be in the game, and players across the world will experience our most intimate selves while playing Still There.

We hope it will leave an impact on you too.

Beware: you might laugh, cry, question the meaning of life and really, really fancy some tasty Italian coffee... all at once!

Still There combines technical puzzles and space-station management with themes of grief and guilt; sprinkled with some dark humour and a wacky AI. How much are you willing to sacrifice to rescue yourself and your loved ones, and how far is far enough?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1063490/Still_There/

Connect with us to stay up to date!

Still There
• Twitter
• Website

Iceberg Interactive
• Twitter
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Twitch
• Steam Publisher Page

Nov 20, 2019

Patch Notes 0.8.5: Lots and lots and lots of bug fixes!

Totally Accurate Battle Simulator - Botten Hanna

New patch with a bunch of bug fixes, enjoy!

Bug Fixes

Fixed issue which stopped the mammoth from attacking correctly.
Fixed issues where monkey king clones would not attack in possession mode.
Fixed a bunch of combat moves not working in possession mode.
The First Dragon carrier now has the kick ability in possession like the other carriers.
Custom campaigns should no longer get stuck on download.
Adding a battle to an existing or newly created campaign should now work as intended.
Loading a previously saved battle and then saving it again now works as intended, with the name and the budget of the battle being saved correctly.
Changing maps after saving a battle no longer has a chance of spawning units from the saved battle.
Units should always correctly register as dead now, even with a priest healing them at the moment of death.
Now correctly hides highlight color around units when entering freecam in placement mode.
No longer possible to place units that aren’t allowed on a campaign level, when they were selected for placement in the campaign level before.
The settings window now works correctly when having Pumpkin Catapult placed.
Mounts get removed correctly when pressing the clear button. Some mounts would just have their rider removed.
Turning into a bat when possessing the vampire should now work as intended. This could yield unexpected errors in the past.
Units no longer drown from their weapons being underwater
Fixed bug which caused the camera to bounce backwards when starting a battle while in slow motion

Changes

Improved Monkey King fighting style
You can now start a battle with “End Battle” key
Some parts of the UI used the wrong time scaling mode. This has now been changed and all UI should behave correctly even in slow motion.
Environments now receive baked shadows when realtime shadows are disabled.
Units moving at high-velocity switch collision detection mode. This will stop them from going through other objects. Commonly happened when units fell from ballooner balloons.
Corrected the name of several units, to better fit the overall naming style. For example, the Hay Baler was renamed from ‘Hay baler’ to ‘Hay Baler’.

Balance

Increased bomb on a stick hp
Increased bomb on a stick damage
Decreased Ullr attack speed

Performance

Decreased shadow distance.
Optimized collision for most levels
Optimized environment models

Nov 20, 2019

Maintenance - November 21

Armored Warfare - Silentstalker

On the 21st of November 2019, starting from 8:00 CET (20th of November, 11 PM PST), the server will not be available for 5 hours due to the application of Update 0.30.5823.

List of Update 0.30.5823 Changes

M8 MGM-166 Changes

Minimum damage distance increased from 200m to 250m
Maximum damage reduced from 1431 to 1189
Rate of fire increased from 15 to 20 rounds per minute
Magazine reload time increased from 48s to 70s
Missiles now completely ignore ERA as was intended

General Changes

Fixed an issue that prevented players from activating a temporary Premium vehicle from their Inventory tabs
Fixed an issue that prevented players from assembling a Premium vehicle from 100 Loot Crate blueprints
Fixed an issue where some items (typically vehicle blueprints) in your Inventory, specifically the Goods section, would appear split into two rows for no reason
Fixed an issue with Stryker ADATS where installing the partial reload module would trigger a full reload of already loaded magazines every time you switch between ATGMs and unguided rockets
ATGM description now has a new value – missile agility (steering rate)
Object 287 now has correctly named weapon system
M60A2: Fixed its suspension model behavior
Shadow RST-V: Fixed several visual model issues (the appearance of optics, wheels clipping through the destroyed model of the vehicle)
Fixed an issue where the Javelin aiming reticle would lack its central crosshair
Fixed an issue with the display of dirt on some vehicles when running the game on low details
Fixed an UI issue where it was possible to push the Incoming and Outgoing Damage panels beyond the screen’s boundaries
Added a flag of South Africa to the list of country flags
Added a number of Black Friday and Cyber Monday assets

Nov 20, 2019

BOOM! - How explosions are made

The Riftbreaker - Pacanus

Kaboom.

When a Steam user left a review on the X-Morph: Defense Store Page saying that the game looked as if it was directed by Michael Bay, it dawned on us - there are lots of explosions in our games. We never gave that much thought, to be honest, but taking a look back it has always been true for all our projects. We love blowing things up and we think we’re quite good at it, so we would like to tell you what goes into creating realistic-looking explosions (and other effects) for EXOR Studios games, including The Riftbreaker.

A sample scene from Zombie Driver HD. There are lots of particles in this one - blood, sparks, explosions… The game wouldn’t be the same without these effects.

The explosions you see in our games are realized through the extensive use of the particle effects system. The particles are prepared by our artist in a specialized tool and then imported into the game. They consist of quadrilaterals (two-dimensional shapes, often referred to as ‘quads’) with a texture and set transparency. The artist can give each of the quads different properties, changing their overall appearance and how they behave in relation to other quads within the same effect, but it is the texture that is the base of it all. In much simpler terms - we set flat images in motion, make them see-through and add some eye candy.

A view from the editor we use - Particle Universe. The tree goes on and on, and each node is a different variable!

You need to have a general idea of what you want to achieve and pick the right textures for the job. There are many types you can choose from. They vary between each other in how they interact with other textures in terms of light and transparency. We mainly use emissives (textures that appear as if they were light sources and can be blended with textures that are underneath them) and refracts (special textures that distort the surrounding area, like in the case of hot air, or a shockwave). When we are not working on explosions, we also make use of alpha blend textures. They do not fake being light sources, but simply mix with other textures in their vicinity. The whole process of creating a particle effect begins with choosing the right texture for the context.

By choosing correct textures you can get a whole range of effects.

Every effect consists of sub effects. They are lower-level structures that allow you to group quads together and apply some properties to them - more on those properties later, but in general - you can individually move the sub effects and make them behave in a certain way. Of course, it is extremely important to position the sub effects right. You don’t want a large cloud of black smoke to cover up all the fire, sparks and debris from the remaining ones. In general, you need to start creating an effect with a clear end goal in mind. Reference videos and images are very useful at this point.

The effects look different in editor and in game, so it’s necessary to test everything live. By the way - this explosion consists of 1042 quads!

Another important piece of the puzzle is the emitter. Every sub effect contains one. It can be seen as the ‘starting point’ of the particle. It controls the spatial properties of the effect. The quads are spawned from the emitter, and the artist specifies all their properties. The particles can be rendered at any given angle, or they can be set to always face the camera. They can be moved in any direction and at any speed, giving the creator complete control over the end result. That’s already a lot of steps, and we’re not done yet.

Boss dying in X-Morph: Defense - let the images speak for themselves.

What you can add on top of the quads rendered by the emitter are the so-called affectors. An affector is a function that can change the quad you’ve already rendered, for example by changing its transparency or color over time. Take a cloud of smoke as an example. The affector will change it in a couple of ways over its lifetime. First, it will be quite small and opaque, growing larger over time and becoming more transparent, just like smoke in real life. Thanks to the affectors we can control when and how quickly it happens and which direction should the quad move.

The Riftbreaker will feature lots of particles, and since we are always learning new things, you can expect them to be even more flashy!

Combining all these things together is a difficult, but incredibly exciting task. It takes years of practice and hours of watching real-life examples of the effects you want to simulate to reach proficiency. We’re pretty sure our particle artist is on several watchlists by now, because of all the videos of explosions, fires and controlled demolitions he has googled over time. Still - worth it!

Next time we will tell you about sequences of explosions - something even more spectacular :) Stay tuned and join the Discord! www.discord.gg/exorstudios

Our social media:
www.facebook.com/exorstudios
www.twitter.com/exorstudios
www.mixer.com/exor_studios
www.twitch.tv/exorstudios
www.youtube.com/exorstudios