- weapons: fixing a crash related to longbow use - sewers map: butcher boss shouldn't die if not killed by a player - graphics: brightness setting is not applied properly - melee: reducing fire ax weight/inertia - graphics: fixing body inverse kinematic - graphics: objects grip poses - minor bugs
Today is the birthday of our game, because two years ago our game appeared in Steam Early Access and became available to everyone.
A lot of things were done over the past two years.
Content
A lot of content and functionality was implemented, especially if we try to compare today's version and initial Early Access Build. A big number of new buses, liveries and upgrades were added, as well as Career Mode with petrol stations and garages. Dynamic day/night cycle and weather now can influence on number of passengers and cars on roads. Thanks to new map and mini-map, it's now much easier to navigate, and driving is more enjoyable with radio. Finally, recently a possibility to change season allowed us to look at the familiar city from a new side.
Cities and routes
Of course, there are quantitative changes as well. The original city (Serpukhov, Russia) was expanded and another city (Cologne, Germany) was added and recently expanded. A number of various bus stops and routes has increased, a new passengers have appeared. Players have much more possibilities now.
Graphics
We've dramatically changed (almost made from scratch) nearly all the textures and models of buildings, roads, cars, road signs. Lighting has been reworked as well, so graphics level now is at least two times better than it was two years ago.
Optimization
Performance was increased too even when graphics became better. Now it loads faster, consumes less resources, so there are more PCs which support it. Now it can maintain stable 40FPS on Ultra Settings even on obsolete 5 years old PCs.
Controllers
One of the most difficult tasks was to make a steering wheel work independently of its configuration, manufacturer etc. Also, we added presets for various steering wheel and made settings flexible, so that you could choose your preset and start playing right away. The most important and difficult problem here is Force Feedback support. Players asked us to implement it since it was released in Early Access and we managed to do it.
Other cars on roads
Traffic cars were made from scratch, starting from models and finishing with their AI, which allowed them to accelerate and brake smoother, yield the road when necessary and behave more realistic in general. We think that almost none of you remember when cars drove at 20 km/h, jumped and swerved off the road like every minute right? :)
Pedestrians
We've added pedestrians on the streets of both cities, and it made them much more alive. They can cross the road and avoid obstacles, so that the game is more realistic.
Localisations
The game is now translated into 13 languages which allowed a lot of people from different countries to join our community.
All of this became possible because of you and your support. Your feedback and moral support helped us not to lose faith in the project. It allowed us to continue working and implement these features no matter what.
We made almost everything we wanted, and now we're even more self-confident. Of course, more updates are waiting for you, and we're already working on them to make Bus Driver Simulator 2019 even better.
On video below you can see how much the current version differs from initial one.
Why two different sites? Both sites gave us different opportunities that made some unique things possible.
For example, Sebastian's (Bastion) Breach playing cards are only available on Zazzle.
Pricing for similar items may also be different on the two sites, so depending on what you're looking for, one may end up better than the other!
Even more importantly, one may offer better shipping options to your country.
With this, we have answered to another request we have received many, many times since release of the game. Maybe some of you remember design elements that you can see here being teased quite a while ago in our social media channels, or you may recognize a certain piece of art here.
We actually commissioned a number of different artists to come up with some interesting designs - one of which made a piece of fanart before that prompted us to commission her to come up with more designs so that we would have one for each main character!
You can see the result of all this above! Feel free to browse - maybe you'll find something you'd like?
Today we're ecstatic to reveal the first pass of our Modular Trench "Mobile Spawn," which will be deployable by TRUCKS only like all other mobile spawns in WWII Online. We also have a couple of items to cover which include 64-bit open beta reminder, and another survey designed to help us improve connections all around the world with our new ISP. Continue reading this article to see pictures of the new Modular Trench "Mobile Spawn," and those additional items.
MODULAR TRENCH "MOBILE SPAWN"
The Modular Trench system was recently announced and with that we discussed a Mobile Spawn would be created to help amplify these trench systems. These Mobile Spawns will only be deployable by Trucks (all current trucks that deployable existing mobile spawn objects), and only Infantry can spawn from the Modular Trench Spawn.
The following pictures represent a work in progress, and may not show the final outcome.
The top two pictures show the actual Mobile Spawn object, where as the lower picture shows the Mobile Spawn connected to other trench pieces.
64-BIT OPEN BETA TESTING INBOUND
In case you missed our announcement last week, we're approaching 64-bit open beta testing. This is a HUGE development! Our Quality Assurance team is conducting internal testing now and things are looking good. We will need some assistance in testing, to get involved please go to our forum post here looking for assistance.
ROUTING / PING SURVEY
CRS is continuing to work on improving routing and ping times to our servers now in Portland OR. Your assistance is requested by filling out this survey (carefully - minor technical requirements needed) so that we can have actionable intelligence from specific use-cases (aka: individual scenarios from customers).
Indie developers are supposed to upload screenshots of their projects on Saturdays - and we believe we should abide the tradition by sharing our own picture.
OK, from an aesthetic point of view it might have a debatable merit, but in terms of mechanics this should be a lovely thing: a prototype for a new personnel management interface.
Initially, crew management this was supposed to be a key element of fine-tuning your entire ship life. Or even the ship life itself. We didn't want a player to be transported from one battle to another. The battle is only a test of how well you have organized the life and production of your small floating settlement.
In the upcoming update we going to polish not only the interface, but also the ship ranking system. Vessels will have several roles. There will be desalination ships, arsenal ships and even distillery ships. In addition, the balance between rowing, steam-powered and sailing vessels is changing. A type of your, say, engine is your strategic decision (try to feed a whole rowing team in an offshore voyage).
Hi everyone! Welcome to our second round of Cleaning the House! As we move closer and closer to an actual release date, we wish to make all the features we have in the game as bug-free and polished as possible grows stronger. This update is a compilation of every change, enhancement and fix we implemented and sent throughout the month, so if you have not played the game for a while, it might be a great moment to jump back in and tell us your thoughts on the current state of Out of Space :D
Improvements
[COM] The mop now has a priority check when stunning aliens, giving preference to aliens that are not yet stunned and then to the ones closer to getting back from a stun;
[COM] Heavy optimization round check both for local and online matches, reducing internet usage demand and processing usage;
Rework on how the position of Aliens and Dogs are synchronized in online matches to prevent them from jumping and teleporting around, visually.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue causing some aliens to teleport out of a Refrigerator to a VERY far away spot in the game world. The game’s performance would suffer severely anytime this happened, so this just might have fixed the fps issues reported in the late game by some players;
[COM] The bug that allowed more than one player to interact with the Refrigerator at the same time has been successfully fixed as well :D
[COM] Bug making the Bucket and the Mop to be eligible for recycling during the “Secret Santa” challenge was also fixed;
[COM] Fixed issue causing players to be instantly disconnected from a game if they were playing on a keyboard and a controller connected to the same computer turned off;
Players that are not the host on online matches can now pet the Dog too;
[COM] Fixed the issue causing some icons on the Refrigerator’s interface to not properly appear for clients on online games;
The sound for choosing a character will not played twice anymore;
Fixed issue causing some interface sounds to never play after the game dynamically changed on the matchmaking screen;
It is no longer possible to change other player’s character on online matches if you have more than one controller connected locally;
And for those of you that did not read the updates the game got since the start of the year, including the addition of multiple sound effects that were missing, the new priority rule added to the action of grabbing objects and several other fixes and enhancements, you can check them out on the following links:
Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex - Robert — High Tower Games
Another month draws to a close, so that means its time for another update! This month mostly was about boring systems work. Unfortunately it doesn't make for riveting reading or scintillating screenshots, but I'll do what I can.
Many games start with war and combat. It makes a certain amount of sense, as games thrive on two or more sides competing. In Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex, the warfare systems appeared relatively late, as I didn't want to end up making a full-on wargame. As a result, a lot of work was required to get war properly into DGR. But first, maps!
Map Modes
DGR has had a political map for some time. This map has been shown before; it features counties that shade themselves according to which kingdom controls them and borders that likewise thicken themselves if they are external rather than internal. Since siege warfare is a big part of war in this game, I found it useful to have a resource that shows what was actually captured.
Perhaps unsurprisingly this required a bit of a refactor in the map code. It is better now and new map modes can be added easily in the future also! I'm kicking around an economic map mode, but I want to avoid making information too easy to come by. Medieval kings struggled for accurate information after all.
Medieval Musters
Summoning armies was never easy. Nobles technically owed military service connected with the lands they held, at least for a fixed number of days per year. In reality, actually getting nobles to show up with men where the king willed and when the king willed it was difficult at best. Some lords refused to show up, or showed up late, or showed up with less men than they were obligated to bring. So it also is in DGR.
Flow of Battle
I experimented with several ways of handling military exercises. Most of them ended up not meeting expectations in one way or another. It ended up taking a fair bit of time before I found the solution that was there all along: events, just like everything else in the game! The event system is robust enough to handle it, and it doesn't require a departure from the way the rest of the game works. There will probably be more on this later.
(As an aside: as a proof of concept of the technology behind this event system in DGR, years ago I made a working, dynamic item shop solely with events. It can accommodate quite a lot of needs.)
Various Other
Quite unexpectedly, I discovered that there was a local game dev community where I live. In case you missed the last update, I actually got the opportunity to give a talk about procedural and interactive narrative at their first annual summit. Should that make it to YouTube, I'll definitely post a link.
