Stay at home... wandering in the cursed forest! Such a thing can happen only during the Daily Deal! Blair Witch is now fearlessly discounted - up to 50% off on Steam. Build up the courage and discover nightmarish secrets of the Black Hills Forest!

After launching our vision of three factions with the Jin Guo Update, we’ve finally had some time to read everyones feedback on the game. We’ve been looking at how the game was faring, what all of your feature requests were, and centered this update around the most urgent, early-game features.

Oh, and also making a kickass planet. Because who doesnt love new maps!

So, what is this Update all about?



Lots of you said, that the current Tutorial is confusing and hardly understandable. Maybe we tried to cram too much fluff into it, while not giving enough freedom to the player to figure out how it works for themselves.

Our new Tutorial should address these problems. It will teach you step by step how the most important actions of the game are done, and then gives you the possibility to defeat the enemy with what you learned.

We hope we can explain the core game concepts better with this tutorial and are looking forward hearing what you think.



Savrog is the third planet of the game. Compared to Archimedea and Karrakesh, it is quite a faster map. The two capitals are across a ravine of molten lava. That means the capitals are attackable even with short range missiles from the beginning of the game. The distance between enemy territories is 2 at the beginning, so it is also very easy to get within conquer ranges during the preparations phase.

We had a lot of fun playtesting Svarog and doing its visuals. Its symmetry and graphical fidelity is definitely something we want to keep up for the future.

We hope you like Svarog. Let us know what you think of it. We already have multiple new planet concepts in the works and will unveil a new one soon.



Lots of you asked for an explicit mode to train your strategies against the AI, withough having to wait through regular matchmaking.

In the new AI training mode, you can choose between the following settings

• AI difficulty: Easy, Medium or Hard
  
• AI faction: UCW, Barovia or Jin Guo
  
• AI Strategy: Agressive, Conquering or Defensive
  
• Planet to Play on: Archimedea, Karrakesh or Svarog

This new mode should make it easy for you to test your decks against specific enemy types to be prepared for online matchmaking. Let us know what you think.



We also added a lot of minor small tweaks to the game, like

• Commander Illustrations - The three iconic commanders from each faction are now in the loading screens. Expect more of them to come!
  
• General AI improvements - The AI behaves way smarter with specialised units, especially orbital strikes and supporters.
  
• New decks for the AI - The AI got 6 new decks to choose from, so expect more variety on how it will play against you
  
• Memory Optimisation - We cut down the memory usage of the game up to 30% on some machines.
  
• And we killed dozends of bugs 🐞

Thank you so much for sticking with us. There is more and new things to come in early summer. Until then, we hope you have a great time playing against each others, Commanders!

Hi Everyone!

We understand that for some of you, having particular language support is a deal or no-deal. Many of you asked about it, therefore we decided to share what we’re planning.




- English

- Polish

- German

- Russian

- Chinese (simplified)

We cannot promise anything more, for now, translating a game with that many lines of dialogues is very expensive. As an indie studio, we need to carefully decide where such an investment makes sense. We’re looking closely at our Steam and GOG.COM wishlists and backers’ whereabouts to determine which countries have the most of our community.

We believe that coming forward with this as soon as possible will clarify the situation for many of you and we hope some of you might look forward to play in their native tongue. Should you have any questions regarding translation or the game itself, feel free to ask in the comments section.

In the meantime, be sure to join our Discord and exchange opinions with other backers or ask us anything :)

See you in the next update!

Team Gamedec


If you need a place to share your thoughts about the campaign, visit our Discord channel:

Welcome heroes and villains to our first Birds of Prey Dev Diary. The new episode launches April 16, 2020, so it is time to share what’s ahead. 

Today we are here with dev and artist Megan “Megzilla” Cheever to pull back the curtain on how we go about creating the “key art” or promotional art you see with each new episode. Enjoy!


Let’s start with the basics. What is your role here on the DCUO team and how long have you been at it?

I’m the 2D Artist for DCUO – I handle concepts for our gear suits, our UI (such as the icons and menus), texture support for our environment artists, emblems, and I help out with marketing art - which includes key art! I’ve been helping design for DCUO for about 4.5 years now.


What does it mean to be a 2D Artist? What things do we see that you make?

For concept art, I help give a road map for our 3D artists (character and environment) to help visualize what a prop or gear suit would look like. My job there is to solve any discrepancies between a comic book suit and how our styles are broken up in the game. Translating a 2D comic into 3D is not always as simple as it might look. 

My icons, UI, and texture work are pretty straight forward. Sometimes I’ll help make a pattern or do a monitor screen or a poster. My actual in-game handiwork is emblems that players can wear, and I’ve been doing the key art, or promotional art, for episodes since Deluge in Spring 2018.


What tools or software do you use most?

95% of my work is done in Photoshop. For all the previous key art, the art team would work within our UE3 editor to get our DC characters posed and lit to start off with, though that’s not the case for Birds of Prey.


How did you get into the industry and find yourself at Dimensional Ink?

I went to Academy of Art University for art school, which is in San Francisco. I attended GDC in 2014 on a student pass and made sure to go talk to as many studios as I could. Life happened in such a way where I ended up in Austin, TX and one of the studios I kept in touch with was also located there. I got my foot in the door via an internship there, and by expanding my professional network. 

One of my friends presented the knowledge that DCUO was looking for a UI artist, I took an art test, and now I rule the second dimension with an iron fist. 

 
Do you have any advice for folks out there considering a career as an artist in the game industry?

Work hard and network. Educate yourself on what a concept artist or illustrator needs to bring to the table and have examples of that in your portfolio. Be open to feedback and have a growth mindset! 

 
Do you have any advice particularly for women looking to break in?

Same as anyone else – work hard, be passionate. Don’t be afraid to speak up or have a voice.  

Okay, let’s talk about key art. First of all, what is it and why do we create it anyway? Don’t just say “marketing.”

I like to think of it as our hype piece! Like a movie poster. Something that gets people curious and excited about our upcoming content. The key art is the centerpiece of the marketing material for our episodes, so it needs to convey an idea of what the episode is about and what the overall mood will be. 

For example, our Metal episodes had really dark key art. For Metal Part II, I wanted to convey a feeling similar to a Frank Frazetta painting, utilizing the drama of a hero versus a big bad monster-creature. Our Birds of Prey key art is much different – more of a fun and and light tone. It features some of our key DC characters in a girl-band team-up vibe which helps convey some of idea of our story.
 
We also use the key art for some of our loading screens and I think that extra reminder of our comic roots is enjoyable for everyone.


It’s episode time and the team needs you to do your magic with key art. What's your first step?

When we are getting ready to start key art work, I like to have a meeting with design, marketing, community, and other stakeholders to discuss what we want to convey. What are the key story points, who are our DC characters, what are we trying to say? 

Usually we don’t start this process until we are about a month or two out from releasing the episode, since we were utilizing our in-game models, but for Birds of Prey we went full illustration, so we were able to brainstorm together much earlier. It was a really fun and collaborative process.

 
How much do you refer to the comics directly in this process?

We rely a lot on our own narrative for the storytelling in the key art. For a couple pieces, we’ve done an homage to other comic book covers to give “our spin” on something we thought was very cool. Our Metal Part I key art took inspiration from DC’s Batman Who Laughs comic book cover, and this Birds of Prey key art is very much inspired by a gorgeous DC Batgirl and the Birds of Prey cover by Kamome Shirahama. 


With Birds of Prey, there is a different mood going on. What makes it stand out?

This episode is FUN and features completely new refreshes on our major DC characters – doing a “band” style illustration allows for the piece to focus on the DC characters. It is much more subtle storytelling than something like our Superman vs. Doomsday key art, but we are also telling a different story in this episode. The mood comes across as entirely different, and that's the point.


Can you speak to that tone or vibe you were looking to communicate, about the episode itself?

Light-hearted! Teamwork! Funny! They let me draw Isis chewing on cords. :)


You mentioned the Birds of Prey key art is full illustration, which is different than the way some other key art was done. Can you explain the differences?

All previous key art that I have worked on utilized our 3D models set in our actual environments. There were a lot more hands that touched the art – we had environment artists help with the levels and posing our character artists’ models, we had our animator making specific poses, and then I helped composite and fill in any gaps. There is a lot of collaboration among the different disciplines, which is really rewarding. This also means it gets done much quicker! 

In the past, we have also had a couple of amazing DC artists do key art for us (Age of Justice, for example) and I thought those turned out super neat. So this time, I asked if I could do an illustration for Birds of Prey. 

A lot of the collaborating was done on the front end so we could hammer out the finer details of the background, the poses, etc. I worked with another concept artist here on the characters themselves, since it is always good to have another set of eyes checking your work. A lot more of my time goes into something like this since everything is handcrafted. I referred to our in-game models for some pose help and used a lot of photo reference as well. 


I know getting from blank page to final piece has a lot of steps. Can you walk us through the process, and maybe shows us some of the major work-in-progress versions along the way?

Sure, here goes!


Earliest Thumbnail Sketches Set 1


Earliest Thumbnail Sketches Set 2

These were my first batch of thumbnails. I thought it would be cute to explore the selfie idea with this team. I could really ham up Harley with duck face or very expressive posing, and I could lean into Huntress being reluctant and DARK in the background. 

It was overall a little too silly for what we wanted for this particular key art. I only had one action sketch since that wasn’t really what we were going for, but I wanted to throw it out there just to see. Since Black Canary is a singer in the comics, I liked the idea of “GIRL BAND” for this set of characters. Using the speakers as the main environment element allowed us to go more pin-up and “graphic design” rather than a literal location.


Color Rough

After much discussion, we went with #6 from thumbnails. The next part was for me to flesh out the sketch a little bit and make sure this was really the direction we wanted to go, as well as address any concerns. We liked the monitors from Kamome Shirahama, so I went ahead and composed those here. At this point, we sent this version to DC to get approval with this direction.


Poison Ivy Sketch with Feedback


Poison Ivy Variant Sketches

This is an example of me sending my linework to one of the other artists. I sent him WIPs of everyone when I was able – this is a great of example of how small changes can really make the difference. Here I thought Poison Ivy’s shoulders were stronger than I wanted and she was overall a little too “tough” – his changes of softening the shape of the shoulder and for the hair to drape over the ear really helped soften her look. 


Updated Color Rough

Here is an updated version of the color rough. I had painted in Harley and some of Poison Ivy, and this was another progress check for our internal team and with DC. Here you can see the refined linework and drawing for all the characters and background. I think characters are much more interesting to draw, so I made sure I blocked in my background and got that linework done before jumping into painting characters. Between here and the final, it’s just rendering out everyone.



Episode 37: Birds of Prey Final Key Art

Looking at this completed and now out there for everyone to see, where does your artist's eye go when you look at it? Walk us through the piece.

Harley is our bright, center of the piece – I think she definitely has the loudest personality and probably the goofiest, so by personality contrast and literal contrast, she stands out the most. 

I wanted everyone to have their personality show through in their pose and placement. Poison Ivy is our femme fatale seductress, Black Canary is cool and badass, and Huntress is a little grumpy about being thrown into the girl gang, so she’s hanging in the back but also still here to be part of the group. 

Oracle’s role is less front-line punchy, so I have her represented through her persona and the monitors. We weren’t confident that Catwoman could fit into this particular composition, and throwing Isis (the kitty) in created an opportunity for some humor. 

 
Are there certain elements or choices that stand out to you as an artist that an average looker-at-art like me probably wouldn't directly notice or have the vocabulary for?

From a technical standpoint, it was interesting to separate the DC characters from the background since there is a lot going on. Then, I had to get them to read separately from the speakers themselves. There was a balancing act of keeping an appropriate visual hierarchy (which means my focal point is the characters, secondary is the background, and Isis is my third read). 

Harley is very light and dark so by value contrast she naturally stands out the most. The background is relatively low contrast to not take focus away from them. There is also a vignette effect, which means I have the edges of the picture darker to guide your eye towards the center. 

 
Are there any elements that surprised you or ended up very different than you expected by the end?

I did all the characters separately and first, which I’m not sure was the best solution to putting this piece together. The most difficult part of this was trying to get everyone to look cohesive and in the same space. 

A couple of my sketches had Black Canary as a ginormous, giant woman since it is a little harder for me to tell proportions when someone is sitting, and I think I had to shrink Poison Ivy down a couple times. Harley also had some leg surgeries throughout the process. It happens! 

I haven’t done very many pieces with multiple DC characters so this was an interesting learning experience. I’m definitely going to ask other artists what they would’ve done differently!

 
Finally, just in your own response looking at this art finished, what comes up? is there something you are most proud of here? 

It means a lot to me that the team was so supportive of going this route with full illustration and just how excited about this project everyone was the whole way. And now I’m geeking out seeing the Birds of Prey art on sites like Steam. SO COOL!


One more big thank-you to Megan for taking the time to walk us through key art today. We hope you have enjoyed the little look behind the scenes. 

If you have questions for Megan, she will be able to answer some of them over on the official DCUO forums, or you can find her on Twitter @megillakitty. 

And remember, Birds of Prey launches April 16, 2020, on PlayStation 4, PC, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. Check back for more inside looks soon!


 

Conquest V2.0 is available now and Call to Arms is on sale this weekend!



Conquest V2.0 switches between attacking and defending missions. When in attacker mode, you can choose what location you want to attack. Each location comes with a specific capture bonus. For instance, a successfully completed mission will give you control over a factory and therefore will provide you extra MP and SP (supplies).


You can also choose the difficulty of the next mission. How tough your enemies are, is indicated by 1 to 3 stars above the mission. The more difficult a mission is, the more extra resources you get for completing it. But be aware, you will face off enemy veteran units!

When hovering a mission, you will see what enemies you are going to face off by the background flag being displayed. The region (winter, summer, desert), as well as the resources you get are also shown. Your units will automatically change their camouflage depending on the region you will fight your battle at!

Watch out! Now your units require supplies to fill up their empty ammo stacks. Supplies are also used for repairing damaged vehicles. This new resource adds another layer of dynamics to the game and gives players who manage their units very well an extra edge. You can find the amount of supplies you have in the middle menu, next to the ammo icon. Specific mission capture bonuses give you additional supplies, so choose your targets wisely!

We also introduced a new research tree. Now you can choose what units you want to unlock, but be aware you need to collect research points first. These can be collected by either completing missions or additionally by choosing the right mission capture bonuses. Choosing the right units to research is very important to be successful later down in your Conquest campaign, so make wise choices!


Airstrikes are finally in the game! You can research them and add them to your special units menu, by collecting enough special points. These are powerful extras that come in handy, if you face off large enemy armies and of course, the destruction they cause is some nice eye-candy!


Say good-bye to out of syncs! Our new netcode took more than a year to be completed. But now we moved away from peer-to-peer networking to a client to server model. This means much better performance for clients in online games and no more game breaking out of syncs. Also slow players won't lag down the whole match for everyone.

Because this feature required a major engine rehaul and lots of data collected by players, we will need a little bit of extra time to polish it up perfectly. Please report any issues you may experience in our forums and we will address them as quickly as possible!

We started to do some Q&A with our community and we invite you over to our twitch channel to get notified, whenever we are online and ready to answer your questions!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/576085583

Thanks for your attention and see you on the battlefield!

A few days later than late but here nonetheless. Time for another weekly update.


Mostly another week of graphical tweaks but there was also multiplayer…



You can see above, the main menu has some letter shadowing added to make it more like the newer logo. Also makes thing pop a bit more and easier to read.

More importantly, multiplayer stuff has been added in. A lot of the Steamworks functionality is in but nothing has been tested just yet. The first test, lobbies and servers, will probably be next week. Then there is a bunch of overhaul to make the game work with it.


More drawing this week. A never-ending onslaught of art assets to be converted.



As you can see above, the Sweaty Mike’s lair got a facelift this week; though the shading isn’t don’t yet. While the list of assets that still need swapped over is long, it is probably time to get the multiplayer up and functional too. Hopefully next week’s update will be more about multiplayer!

See you then.

Added level 7 (bonus stage).
We test played all the levels of this game.
We made adjustments to the game's brightness, bloom, and blur.

Come join us at http://www.twitch.tv/deadhaussonata as your Community Herald plays through Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. Get your questions about Deadhaus Sonata and Eternal Darkness answered by Denis Dyack, who will also provide director commentary during the playthrough.

What could this possibly be about? Who knows, anything is paw-sible...

Any ideas?

Patch Notes

0.32.0

• Added: Standard mode now offers 3 difficulty settings: Normal, Challenge and Expert.
  
• Added: You can now filter products by categories on the Assign Product tool.
  
• Changed: Balanced price and demand for some products, mainly to make specialty stores more viable and nerf some overperforming products.
  
• Changed: Objectives' rewards now scale with difficulty.
  
• Added: Warnings on the manage mods menu if mods exceed the maximum supported number (products and floor tiles).
  
• Added: Warnings on the manage mods menu if mods alter gameplay and would prevent some achievements from being granted.
  
• Changed: Changing floor tiles now costs $5 instead of $50.
  
• Changed: Characters are now less reluctant of crossing roads.
  
• Fixed: Stock clerks endlessly running around stores without restocking anything.
  
• Fixed: A rounding error when deducting foundations building costs.
  
• Added: Polish translation.
  
• Changed: Updated translations with the latest Localizor data.

0.32.1

• Added: 4 new achievements.
  
• Added: New event: Viral outbreak. Some employees stay at home sick and customers stock up on supplies. Unlike other events, this pops at the last moment on the timeline and can't happen more than once a year.
  
• Added: Art for the difficulty modes.
  
• Added: Jingles when objectives and research projects are completed.
  
• Changed: You can now order builders to prioritize any area.
  
• Fixed: Some text going out of bounds.
  
• Added: Simplified Chinese translation.
  
• Changed: Updated translations with the latest Localizor data.

0.32.2

• Added: Final master of the original soundtrack from David Gonzalez.
  
• Added: A detailed breakdown of daily income and expenses is now accessible from the finance menu.
  
• Fixed: Incorrect maintenance cost displayed for individual businesses when the maintenance sandbox setting was not default.
  
• Changed: Some tweaks to the Viral outbreak event.
  
• Changed: Updated translations with the latest Localizor data.

0.32.3

• Added: Enabled Steam cloud (Syncs saves, achievements, mod config and workshop items).
  
• Added: Final 'final' master of the original soundtrack.
  
• Added: New achievements are now active on Steam.
  
• Changed: Improved customers' parking AI.
  
• Changed: Removed misleading 'Requires access' in list of zone requirements.
  
• Fixed: A bug where staff who were parking when loading a game would permanently be considered as stuck in traffic.
  
• Fixed: Deliveries stopping if the customer parking was considered full.
  
• Fixed: A rare text glitch in the 'Word of mouth' notification.
  
• Changed: Updated translations with the latest Localizor data.

You can help improve the translation in your language: check the game's Localizor page https://www.localizor.com/game/18/translations

If you have bugs to report, please post in the appropriate Discussions: http://steamcommunity.com/app/521150/discussions/1/

If you are experiencing crashes, please follow the instructions and post in this thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/521150/discussions/1/282992646970591669/