Hey there, I wasn't expecting to release a patch this soon after the last one, but the difference this change makes is worth a Patch all its own. The AI has been fixed and optimized, improving the middle/late Game experience.

The late Game had an imperfection in the AI logic that is hard to explain; the simple answer is that to find its way the AI switches between methods of pathfinding but would get stuck on one of them. It would have trouble finding its way after running into a barrier. When there were a bunch of Creeps, turrets firing and things were crazy it wasn't easy to see- some Creeps might never have found their way to the HQ if left unchecked though.

As the Game progresses there are more Creeps per Wave, so more Creeps finding their way around the mountains. This would slow the Game down as you progressed up in Levels, making the mid-late Game slow during attacks- even on good computers. This got worse the farther you got in the Game. This has been massively improved, the Game performs significantly better.

On an unrelated note, I took a Job that will last the rest of this Week and part of next so I won't get as much done in that time. Game Design doesn't pay the Bills yet, but I'm hoping that will change sometime in the next Year or two. I will still be working on the Game- just not as much until this Job is finished. Fear not! I work for myself remodeling so I make my own hours and I'm not going anywhere. If anything, these jobs motivate me more, I want to get out of remodeling permanently and focus %100 of my time on Game Design. I thought you may want to know why I won't be around as much in the immediate future but that's enough about me.

And that's it for this one. There's no official changelog other than to say the AI has been drastically improved. I hope this improves your enjoyment of the Game! Toodle-oo!

yo! sup funky friends? Hope y’all have been having a great start to the new year. We are getting very close to the One Year Anniversary of the release of ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove! We hope we’ve been able to deliver a jammin’ experience that everyone was happy with in 2019.



The game has just been released in Japan and the reception so far has been great! The Japanese language option is patched into all versions of the game, so if you prefer to get your funk delivered in another language, download the recent patch and select your preferred language from the main menu. Along with enabling Japanese language the new update comes with some small fixes, a brand new hidden Easter Egg and an increased framerate for the PlayStation version! More on that in a bit.

We have a special announcement that we would like to share with y'all. Over the past 10 years co-creator of ToeJam & Earl, Greg Johnson, has been working on a new card game that he is finally ready to unveil to the world! Well.. it’s not really a “game”, but there are definitely cards involved, we can promise you that.



We’d like to introduce our two new homies that will essentially be the stars of this new project. We aren’t exactly sure what to name them yet. Do you have any ideas? Let us know what you think!

We are considering Kickstarting this new card game, so for more info please make sure you are receiving our future Kickstarter updates and be sure to follow us on any of our social media accounts where we will be revealing more information on Greg’s new card project in the future!

Well back to the main funk boys ToeJam & Earl. Here are the patch notes for the recent update:

Build 1.6.0J
==========================
Enabled Japanese language
Jam Out Easter Egg (Press A+B on player picker screen. Use your D-Pad to jam out. Press start to exit jam out) [[i]Steam only for now[/i]]
Framerate performance enhancement [[i]PS4 only for now[/i]]
Updated Credits
Spring Shoes stop near elevator instead of inside
Amped Present Freeze can't be paused in Elevator (prevents softlock)

This update is now live on all versions of the game, except Xbox where we are still working on releasing the game in Japan. The Jam Out Easter Egg is only in the Steam version, and is just a small sample of what we wanna do with this feature. (Please feel free to give us feedback!) The framerate performance enhancement is live on the PlayStation 4 version of the game, we will try to bring these enhancements to the other console versions of the game in the future.

What do you think of this update and our two new homies? Feel free to drop us a line in the comments or email us at support@humanaturestudios.com.

As always, thanks for all your support and we look forward to updating you next month as we get closer to the One Year Anniversary of ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove!

Stay funky,
HumaNature Studios Team

Hello Dear Game Players!

2020 has just started, but we've been hard at work at RavenFist Studios planning out what this year will look like for Unicorn Tails.

For starters, we've already released a ninja fix for a bug that one of you, Dear Game Players, brought to our attention.

Also, our first patch will be released very shortly. This includes some refinement to a few characters dialog to make quests flow better as well as a handful of bug fixes.

This is the pattern that we feel is most appropriate. If there's something that is game breaking, we're going to fix it, test it, and release it. These are our ninja fixes. Then we'll release official patches that will coincide with a post in these forums with patch notes.

For our first major addition to the game, we've decided to take the Effects in the game (where you can make your unicorn sparkle, generate fire, etc.) and morph it into an Ability System. Once this is in place you will have the visual effects on the unicorn, but it will also grant limited powers. Want to gallop at twice speed? Select that ability from the menu. Want to jump twice as high? You get the idea. Each ability will be tied to a hotkey (1-4 on the keyboard, or the D-pad on a controller) and will function on a timed cool-down. Of course, your ability to ... er ... assign an ability will depend on if you have found, purchased, or unlocked said ability first. Post your thoughts in the feedback forum and let us know what other powers you'd like to see for your Unicorns. We have a huge list but are always looking for more.

Finally, we are putting together an official road map of improvements and additions we are planning to make to Unicorn Tails through the rest of 2020. Once we have that complete, we'll post it for all to see. In addition to enhancements like the Ability System we are also spending a lot of time and effort on new quests that will continue to unfold the greater story of Unicorn Tails. There is some exciting stuff coming up in Quests, but I can't share any more about that right now.

Thank you, Dear Game Players, for joining us on this unicorn journey. We've been very pleased at the reception Unicorn Tails has received so far and are committed to our promise of expanding and refining this game through its Early Access life.

Until next time,
RavenFist Studios

Happy New Year, friends!

We’re kicking off 2020 with a brand new development patch for you to play with!

Development Patch 8193.6 focuses on creation for both single player and multiplayer. This dev patch is best suited for our content creator community, as it requires technical knowledge of our toolsets (and a willingness to endure a few issues). We hope you have some fun breaking these features— fair warning: we’re expecting there to be some outstanding bugs in this build.

This patch is network-compatible with all other 8193 releases; however, new features will not work when the patch revision differs (and characters may fail to pass ELC).
Check out the full patch notes below!

All the best,
- Beamdog NWNEE Team


Weapons-related feats (Focus, Epic Focus, Spec, Epic Spec, Improved Crit, Overwhelming Crit, Devastating Crit, Weapon of Choice) can now be customised on a per-baseitem case.

Please refer to baseitems.2da for the new columns: WeaponFocusFeat EpicWeaponFocusFeat WeaponSpecializationFeat EpicWeaponSpecializationFeat WeaponImprovedCriticalFeat EpicWeaponOverwhelmingCriticalFeat EpicWeaponDevastatingCriticalFeat WeaponOfChoiceFeat


Weapons can now have custom visual effects (in addition to the stock fire, ice, electricity, etc.)

Please refer to the new file iprp_visualfx.2da for details.


We've added (somewhat partial) support for custom spellcaster classes by "unhardcoding" a lot of the builtin constants and references.

Please refer to classes.2da for the new columns: MemorizesSpells SpellbookRestricted PickDomains PickSchool LearnScroll Arcane ASF SpellcastingAbil SpellTableColumn CLMultiplier MinCastingLevel MinAssociateLevel CanCastSpontaneously

Note that not all combinations are valid. We recommend cloning one of the existing caster classes and then start customising from there. When adding spellcasting to new classes, remember to also update existing columns.

There is also a new ruleset entry: COMPANION_LEVELS_STACK, defaulting to 0.


You can now specify LODs via a new file type ".lod". When the game loads the model mymodel.mdl, it will look up mymodel.lod. Inside that file, add the following lines:


The game supports LOD files with up to three levels, as shown above. You may omit the last entry. The first line is the high-resolution model; the other two are meant to be lower-resolution model files, that will be dynamically swapped out as the camera reaches the given distance.

Please note that LODs are highly dependent on the screen resolution of the client. The actual mechanisms here need to still be figured out; but for now, we'd suggest choosing LOD distances as if the user had a 1080p screen. To support other resolutions, there is a configuration slider in the debug settings (Ctrl-Shift-F12, select "Config", key: "graphics.lod.scale-factor") that users can influence LOD distances with.


The game now supports 50 more custom animation slots (LOOPING_CUSTOM21 -> 70).


A new script call was added:


Changes made through this call will appear immediately on clients.


When downloading something via NWSync, disk writes now happen asynchronously while more content is downloaded. This should minimise occurrences of "Waiting On Storage". If this is giving you grief, you can turn it off in settings via the key "nwsync.transfer.flush.async".

The NWSync Downloader UI was swapped out with a new version, which is now rendered in Nuklear. It has a fancy graph and a pause button.

Finally, the Storage Manager (Options -> NWSync) now has two tabs: Servers, and Modules. Server manifests (i.e. when joining a PW that offers files) show up in the Server tab.

The Modules tab will show all singleplayer/offline modules you have downloaded via NWSync. To facilitate this, the Storage Manager UI now can download offline modules for you; however, by default, no remote repositories offering this are added to your game.

To add a remote repository, add the following lines to your settings.tml (right at the top is fine, the game will sort them in properly on next launch):

To actually generate a repository of your own that can offer singleplayer modules for download, you need to generate NWSync manifests that have module contents in them (nwsync_write --with-module --group-id N ...). Finally, add all manifests into a big json array in modules.json in the repository root (the nwsync_write tooling will update soon to do this for you). See the sample repository if it is unclear.

Modules downloaded this way will show up under "Other Modules" when clicking Singleplayer -> New Game.


There is a new, experimental, texture caching system in place that will speed up GL texture binding, depending on your hardware (especially if you are CPU-bound). It is enabled by default, but you can turn it off via the config flag graphics.experimental.aggressive-texture-caching, if it turns out to have issues.

We have seen - depending on scene complexity and the amount of texture maps in use - dramatic performance improvements. We'd appreciate feedback on this.


We fixed a shader issue that would result in illumination appearing on content that was intended to be black (e.g. the tile borders in the “Dungeon” tileset).


We fixed mipmaps not being generated for non-compressed textures.


ResMan can now use more than 256MB of memory for caching. There is a configuration option to specify the percentage of detected physical memory that ResMan can use. Additionally, new defaults in place will avoid I/O churn, resulting in vastly improved performance in complex scenes.


The priorities of userpatch, modules, haks, and override have been restored.

• Toolset now allows selection of heads from custom slots 50-99.
  
• The up and down arrow keys for Adjust Position now progress in perfect sequence.
  
• We fixed a bug where double-clicking on an area entry could cause parts of the toolbar to grey out.
  
• We fixed a truncation issue when using search & replace in the script editor.
  
• You can now add a NAME CExoString field to your custom tileset palettes, instead of having to put a STRREF.
  
• Object descriptions over 2000 characters long are no longer truncated.
  
• The toolset no longer crashes when moving the start location between areas open in multiple tabs.
  
• A group of raised objects now retains their z-level when moved.

• [Windows] We fixed large strings, such as chat logs, disappearing if they exceed 1024 characters.
  
• We addressed an issue where models/resources would leak over when hopping servers, sometimes resulting in a crash.
  
• We updated the crash reporter text and URL.

Plantera 2: Golden Acorn store page is now live!

Add it to your Wishlist now to get notified when released! ːPhelperːːPpigːːPhenːːPsheepːːPcowːːPdogːːPmagpieːːPfoxːːPbunnyːːPwolfː

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1091920/Plantera_2_Golden_Acorn/

How does character development begin? Of course with concepts, the first raw sketches, tries and errors. Our Potata was same way. I have tried many different images and styles before find final appearance of the heroine. Let’s take a look how it all began and what happened after character’s countless changes.
Character creation process for a platformer have many limitations and requirements. The most important thing is character readability in the environment. If you want to achieve it, need consider few points:

1. Simplicity.
We can’t give to the character complex clothes and need keep clothes elements as less as possible (you will need to animate them all and better don’t make too much work yourself)

2. Spot.
In the ideal case, it is better for the character to be a single spot, but it is often impossible. Therefore, the character must be divided into the main parts (hair, face, cloak, shirt, pants, etc.) and each of them should noticeable. The spots should be different sizes, in a hierarchy from large to small.

3. Integrity with the environment.
Character should noticeable in an environment, which means he should be contrasted in something, but he should not look like cut off from another game. This does not mean that we cannot afford a character style different from the environment (remember the anime Miazaki with a stunning environment with so much details and characters made in the style of "outline-fill"), but the difference should not be so radical as to divide the picture into parts.





I specifically have found examples with varying degrees of characters details. If in Ori and Seasons after fall, everything is simple and clear - the character is almost a single spot, contrasting to the environment. In the case of other examples, everything is a little more complicated, but still we see spots on the character, which at some point in the gameplay help not to lose sight of it. Bright hair and voluminous hairstyle, clothes of saturated color. Locations in the game can be different in color and tone, so it is precisely different spots on the character that help to read it in the environment, even if it changes.
Before moving on to drawing a character, need consider his description in text form. It is necessary to build on something, and not draw at random. Potata's description is: witch-mage, mischievous, fidget, travel enthusiast. From this words, we must understand what elements we can translate into design.

So, we start the game in association:

· Witch: broom, hat, red hair

Mischievous: bright colors in clothes and jewelry, negligence of clothes (boots of different colors, hat crookedly sitting)

· Travel enthusiast: backpack bag, powerful boots, warm clothes, stick staff.



Naturally, all selected elements cannot be immediately pushed into one design in the conditions of the required simplicity. But we have a starting point from which we will begin to visualize the idea.

After stage called "a bunch of options" select one from heap and finalize it. In our case even was made animations for character, since it could look good in static, but after animation you could notice, that something wrong. And this happened in our case, the character was too compressed in proportions, because of this, the animation was poorly read and certain difficulties of limb movement appeared (it’s difficult to make action movements with such small hands). You also need to remember check character readability in environment.

https://youtu.be/lCl1-NaRtKs

After little suffering and feels like “I don’t know how to draw,” a test of different styles and proportions begins. Keep main colors and elements, two more variants of the character appeared.



Now need make decision about character style. Important to do it exactly at the stage of creating the main character. The remaining inhabitants of the game world will be made in the same style and it would not be logical to change the style when the entire population of the village is already painted.

I try not to be guided by the “like-dislike” method or “but I love red, let everything be red”, I try to form a series of criteria by which this or that option is better for the project (oh, if all art directors did everything like that) .

The first option was discarded due to the tightness of proportions, and too cute. The third option has a very thin stroke, which reduces readability in small format. By the way, another important factor is readability in the final size. The character in the game is quite small and some things can only get in the way when reduced. The symbol of the black cat on clothes is also poorly read with decreasing. Was decided to remove the backpack, because it is simply not visible in the game. And why do something that is not visible?

We end up on the second option, but then happened something unexpected. I played the game Mystik Belle and realized that our characters are very similar. Why so?! After all, I have such a unique design, a red-haired witch in a purple dress and hat! And with a magic wand!



But seriously, I realized that the character turned out to be too typical, and for sure there will be another thousand and one projects with a similar main character. Well, again start everything from the beginning.
I did not want to refuse the idea of a witch-sorceress, since the plot was already built on this basis. But there are different sorceresses, and I turned my attention to the theme of the “forest tribe”.

https://youtu.be/-1WIyZvcqMY

first build with character
At that time, it was the final version of the character, I was completely satisfied with it. But then a terrible beast called "feedback from YouTube" have came.

From that moment throwing began between own vision and the opinion of the audience. For a very long time we were looking for a compromise solution. Up to the last version, I wasn’t sure that this is the final character. How to filter and accept critic is a topic for a separate article. In this article I want to say one thing, the truth is somewhere in between. You cannot completely reject your audience, but blindly listen advices from a random people is also unacceptable.

I try to form a set of points for process the element again.
The set for this version looks like this:
1. There are too many spots on the character’s clothes. Clothing is divided into torso, sleeves, collar, legs and boots, all it looks too separately.
2. The braid, which was originally designed to improve the effect of the character’s movement in fact, strongly emphasized each flaw in the animation, especially on transitions from one state to another.
3. Same size of spots. There is no main segment. It is necessary to highlight something like voluminous hairstyle or long skirt.
4. Potata is still too "cute", can make her a little older?

https://youtu.be/ru0RA93n-zM

Potata's clothes became more wholesome, unnecessary decorations disappeared. The blue color of the dress is better read on a green background, and green is the main color of forest locations. The hairstyle became more voluminous, the spots lined up in a hierarchy: dress, hair, face.
But, as you already know, this option is not final. The time has come for the Potata_final_final_superfinal_.psd file! While writing this article, I was trying to remember why I decided to redo the Potata teenage version. Maybe someone throw out his important opinion and I take in bad part, sat down to redo everything again. Maybe it was just the mood "everything is bad." I am a very self-critical person, constantly dissatisfied with what I create. Maybe an attack of self-criticism became the cause of new changes.

https://youtu.be/j8Om8EMD9C4

Looking back, I see that at this stage I begin to run around in circles. When it is already at the finish line and path is passed, it is easy to talk about your mistakes. You see them clearly and know how to fix it. But in the search process it is always more complicated, the main thing is to finish this search at a certain moment, otherwise you can endlessly search without nothing in the end.

Potata shrank again in proportion, cut off her long braid. Equivalent spots appeared again: face, dress, hair. Here is an example of the negative impact of continuous changes. You stop understanding where it is better and where it is worse. At this moment there is no “better is worse”, there is only “in a different way”.



At this moment I swear once again not to change the character design. Since we had all the animation ready, completely changing the character is too expensive. It was decided to change only the head. Body and general skeleton of the animation will remain the same.
Also remove the collar, because in small size it was like a "beard". Initially, the collar was made according to the logic of cartoon Uncle Fedor, where picture hide the hole in the wallpaper. Our collar hides shoulders and animation flaws. After animations fixes collar wasn’t need anymore.



he hairstyle has become much curly to highlight the main spot in the design. I want make character restless and naughty, that’s how she acquired a malicious smirk and a frown.
Then again came the terrible, but already familiar beast, "Feedback from YouTube." I will not list all the epithets about the face of Potata, but I liked only one “face like in the first max payne”. Now I solemnly swear to don’t change the character and decide to change only the face. I hope it doesn’t get to the point that I will only change nose or eye.





So, in just a couple of steps, we came to the final character design. I solemnly swear, I won’t change the character anymore.

https://youtu.be/_3hG_lyDvf4

This is a large update, containing numerous changes. One major change is that the levels have been streamlined, made more interesting and sometimes replaced entirely. I played a lot of ‘Baba Is You’ over the break (awesome game btw), and really liked the pacing, apparent simplicity, ability to undo moves and fully visible state, so I tried to incorporate some of that.

All the text was weighing down time travel trainer, and not really adding much, so I really tried to streamline that; there’s still text, of course, but now it shouldn’t get in the way of gameplay so much.

Most of the levels have been changed or replaced outright; there’s now less repetition of known techniques, more puzzles that challenge you with something different.

Other changes:

• Tweaked throw controls to play nice with mac
  
• Tweaked general throw controls
  
• Changed how mouse-view works; now shows which gates connect to which buttons/plates
  
• Fixed various graphical glitches
  
• Added a 'reload from 2 time machines ago' option
  
• Enabled Esc and other hotkeys for use in menu system
  
• Made most maps initially revealed
  
• Did some research on mac + linux compatibility; nothing definite yet though

Demo version 0.0.10 is now released for Steam (other platforms will follow)
-Added Auto Run option in settings screen.
-Added the default keyboard control binding window to the settings screen.
-Added new reward for The Buzzlet Collector Quest (The ones Nikola needs now have to be of Potential 15).
-Removed the function where the player is moving an extra spot after the player stopped running.
-Most 'yes' and 'no' answers can now be quick-selected by using the Use or Back button on your controller. Let us know if some are missing.
-The room with the fusebox in Thunderous Cave now has a checkpoint.
-Your item amounts now update while still in the shop screen.
-Minor bugfixes & updates.
-Canul Fruit now has a 30% chance (up from 20%) to inflict a condition.
-Added a 'Shift' button to the on-screen keyboard, for easy capitalisation.
-Added trainers to the Battle Grounds at the Lux Solis Campus after defeating the Titan and having returned to the Lab. (You can find them when your quest says you should go through the Soggy Swamp.)

Demo version 0.0.9 is now released for Steam Windows and MacOS (other platforms will follow)
-Fixed Trainer Hub healing monitor.
-Opened up the fusebox room after completing the quest.
-Adjusted volume of certain loud sound effects.
-Adjusted Combi Cake prices to reflect SP cake price drop.
-The Beezel harassing Perrin can now be caught.
-Bugfixes and balances for a number of skills which weren't working as intended.
-Added explanation of savedata modification when starting on Hard or Insane.
-Shop now has a cancel option.
-Potent (x2) and Perfect (x4) Coromon give more XP upon defeating them.
-Added the six Swurmies to Hayville before they escaped.
-Fixed some typos and map errors.
-Reorganised some items: renamed Quest items to Key Items, and switched a number of items between the Key Items and Other categories. So if you lost some items, check the different tab

Demo version 0.0.8 is now released for Steam Windows (other platforms will follow)
-Fixed Vetegarian Trait not working, which broke in version 0.0.7.
-Added an option to Rest during battle, whenever you miss out on some sp.
-Halved Potentiflator & Traitformator cost.
-Trainer Hub healing area received a nice makeover.
-Lowered amount of gold lost when blacking out.
-Fixed Glacier description.
-Slightly increased Treadmill speed.
-Jebediah stands ready to challenge you again, once you meet the requirements. The reward will be worth it...

Demo version 0.0.7 is now released for all platforms
-Lowered encounter ratings in all areas.
-You now gain XP for catching Coromon, 50% of what you would earn defeating them.
-Tons of balance changes to skills, energy costs, power and accuracy.
-Added percentages to skill descriptions when they did not yet said it.
-Changed the values for the text speed settings.
-Type names added to the Type Manual.
-Added missing indicator which shows number of remaining Coromon for a trainer.
-LuxPhone sfx should now be normal again - this file was corrupted.
-Cut some dialogue from the prologue.
-Changed accuracy values from Clumsy Power (-20% to -10%) and Twilight (-15% to -10%)
-Coromon with the Escapist trait will now escape quicker
-The postman now decides to go to Hayville for its escort.
-Fusebox now discharges when hit by a non-electric skill, as intended.
-Added one-time controls explanation popups for keyboard navigation clarification.
-Increased Flashlight duration.
-Balanced some trainers.
-Adjusted prices of some items.
-Removed gold penalty when losing from Dexter.
-Added a number of extra (hidden) items for you to find, including a very exclusive piece of headgear...

Starting Tuesday, January 14 (at 4 a.m. PST) and continuing until Tuesday, January 21, you’ll get increased loot drops when you complete any of the following instanced dungeons:

• Bahaar's Sanctum
  
• Demokron Factory (Hard)
  
• Antaroth's Abyss
  
• Dark Reach Citadel
  
• Lilith's Keep
  
• Ravenous Gorge (3-person)
  
• Ghillieglade

Note : We’ve reduced the Adventure Coin entry cost for Akalath Quarantine during this dungeon highlight, but the drop rates remain the same.


Earn increased item rewards and gold when you complete Vanguard Requests between Tuesday, January 14 (at 4 a.m. PST) and Tuesday, January 21.


The Starlyn event consists of two weeks of battlegrounds, in which you can earn expanded rewards through the Starlyn event window. Check out our forum post for more details.

This event continues until Tuesday, January 21.


New and returning TERA players can pick up a Twitch Prime Starter Pack full of fantastic items—including 30 days of elite status—by linking their Amazon Prime and En Masse accounts before Tuesday, May 19.

For more details, visit our Twitch Prime Starter pack page.

If you found any bug from the game, you can post your report to here or under the topic on discussion area. As the game has been graduated from Early Access, but we are still developing and improving the game.

Competition time 12.1. - 31.1.2020

You, as a player, are an important part of the RTS Commander development process. Game itself is not full of bugs of course, but there will be always bugs what we have missed.

• 5-25 USD Gift cards, that you can use to buy any game
  
• Keys to Games
  
• More will be invented

This is our way to reward you for helping us develop the game.

How can I take part to Bug Hunt Competition?
Simply Post a bug report here under this discourse.

How do you choose the winners?
We arrange a lottery X time per X months, and reports which have been posted here are taking a part to the lottery. There will be 1-3 winner per X month.
Person who have found biggest bug of the month will receive special prize.

Where can I report bugs?
Reports should be posted under this announcement or to the discussion.

This Bug Hunt will end on 31. January but we suggest you to post reports before that time, because Bug Hunt typically last about a month, but if we get important reports bug hunt can be 2 weeks long and continue after that.

Let the Hunt Begin!