Hello!

I've set a new build of the game live to fix a few issues.

- Fixed slow loading times (particularly for tutorials, but overall when starting new challenges, templates or campaign levels) due to replacing old types of blocks to the new smaller block type. Tutorials will be overhauled in the next proper update.
- Fix for stadium and pub showing 0 efficiency
- Fix for weird directory structure for Win 32 build.

The slow loading times was due to a slow conversion from the old larger block types to the current smaller one. I've now properly converted them permanently and loading should now be quicker overall when starting new templates or levels.

Also:
- Tweaked colliders for new decorations.
- Weightier building destruction!

Just some minor additions I was working on.

As for version 0.28 I've set the preliminary date to May 3rd. This is a bit later than I had first expected, but this is mainly due to an extremely heavy work load at my regular day job. Given the situation, It has become difficult to make proper progress on water blocks and new tutorials, while working under stress on several fronts. I simply need to give myself some space to work things through properly without a deadline looming just around the corner.

The main features I expect to have in the next version is:
- Water blocks.
- New tutorials and improved UI for newcomers.
- Some additional items and better UI using expandable sections in the budget panel.
- More entertainment buildings and additional props (billboards on buildings and the like).

I will skip the sunday devlog this week, but they will return as usual next week!

/ Nick

Hi everybody!

We’ve spent a month working remotely, like almost everyone else in the world. We must say, this is an unusual experience! Thankfully, our pipelines are good enough to keep the development process going at full speed!
Today we give you a quick word about our latest developments. Let’s go!

Our enemies could drop valuable items, such as armor, rage charges, etc. We added a clot of biomaterial, which you will need to collect. It’s an important resource, exchangeable for other needful things: weapons, armor, and other goodies.



We introduce arrowheads for Eileen arrows, allowing you to fine-tune her tactics.



Meet the new NPC, the Storekeeper, who arrived at the Barracks. He’ll gladly trade fun stuff for the biomaterial you collect from dead monsters.



The young Chameleon’s animations betray his eager wish to prove himself in ARK.



And this is our remote office, 24/7! We thought you might be curious.



Take care of yourself. Stay healthy, stay safe, stay home.

Hello dear mortals,

welcome to this new post about level design insights, we will tell you more about how we are building our levels and a very interesting (and free tool) that we use to randomize elements in them.

Along this Early Access stage, we are sharing the different stages that the project is going through. One key aspect for us in Dungeon Crowley is the level design process. And we thought it would be interesting to give you some insights and illustrate how we are going through it in a more detailed way.

So prepared the following time-lapse, and a list of steps showing our workflow in Unreal Engine 4:

1. Global lightning (all rooms in Hod share a common directional light, skylight, skysphere and such).
   
   
   
   
2. Preparing material sets: all common materials that should be shared across maps, taking color and blending in consideration.
   
   
   
   
3. Map lightning: overall lightning specific to the map such as torches, other light sources and reflections spheres.
   
   
   
   
4. Macro construction: walls, big meshes and overall bounding assets.
   
   
   
   
5. Micro construction: small props and details; plants, sun rays and such.
   
   
   
   
6. Unique details: details that are unique to the map.
   
   
   
   
7. Lightning finalization: re-analysis of the level light with all assets and level-design done.
   
   

Final result:



Also related to level design, we want to share with you a free tool we found very useful when doing our level design with randomized elements, it is called Prefabricator, and here you can see it in action:



To contextualize how we use it, we have to explain we use a strong randomization algorithm and had split our process in two steps:

1. Macro: randomizing entire hand-crafted rooms and interchanging the order of appearance between them.

2. Micro: altering internal details (such as decoration and some gameplay related props, wall, chests, etc.)

We've been using the Prefabricator plugin to perform do the second step. It is a fabulous tool because of the following reasons:

• Very level-design oriented.
  
• Allows prefab collections, thus, stressing the reutilization of those.
  
• Can be used during runtime and even in a async way, allowing very cool effects like re-randomizing an entire scenery in runtime without blocking the game flow.
  
• Can handle nested collections.
  
• Allows seed linking to relate entire different prefabs, (fine control over chain generation of different collections, thus, amplifying re-utilization and giving better macro control of a entire scenery).

We had to make a few changes to allow it to work with our multiplayer design, but aside of that, this plugin is a very professional and complete tool; and even better: it's free!

You can find more info about Prefabricator for Unreal Engine here: https://prefabricator.io/

Stay tuned for more news,
Animvs Game Studio

What's up, everyone!
EA v1.3 has been updated!

Sanctuary is the last place to obtain the final Time Shade to operate the Clock Tower.
There are no lootable Secret Chests, Curses, or Soulstone, unlike the other stages.
However, you can upgrade your party members with new objects specifically designed for the Sanctuary.

The objects at Stage 4 have powerful features.
For example, you can learn another party member's skill or prevent an equipment from disappearing after your party is eliminated.

Also, bosses at Stage 4 are on another level compared to previous bosses, which will threaten you with powerful attack patterns.
Will you be able to defeat them?

Visuals and gameplay at Stage 4 are not complete in the current beta.


Visual improvement on Hein's skills: 'Tear Up', 'Mutilate', and 'Assault Slash'
Improved frame rate in the fields of Stage 2 and 3.

Boss - Sacred Karaela: Slightly reduced health, armor, and evade chance.
Oblivion Potion: 'Select 1 of 2 random skills and forget it.' -> 'Choose a skill. Forget that skill.'
Potion of Transformation : You can stun an enemy instead of polymorph.
Oblivion Potion, Potion of Transformation, Weakening Potion: Debuff success rate has increased significantly when you target an enemy.
Relic - Remnant of Madness: Now the bonus damage/healing has a limit of 50.
Relic - Magic Lamp: Phoenix's 'I'll Step Out!' will no longer be randomly cast.
Equipment - Token of Execution: The effect has changed.
Pressel - Holy Light: Slighly reduced the healing amount.
Charon - Soul Thurible: Now gains a charge for every 3 enemies defeated instead of 2.
Iron Heart - Shield Bash, Shock Wave: Base bonus damage with shield on has been removed.

We've found it difficult to structure basic mechanics on a new character that's in development. So we are working on another one instead. It'll take more time than we had expected to show our 'babies' to you. Thank you for your patience.

How to join the Beta
Steam Library -> Right Mouse Click on Chrono Ark -> Properties...

You can also join through the Beta tab!



by 오무라이스으 - Lucy


by An anonymous user - Hein and Sizz

Thank you so much for your fanart!

Hello hunters!

First of all, we wanted to thank you all for the feedback that you provided us since the launch day. We tried to reply to every comment, but if we didn’t, be aware that we read every post.

We prepared a patch 1.0.5 that addresses most of the issues you found in the game. We fixed bugs and rebalanced the Corruption system (full patch notes are at the end of this post). This is definitely not the last update we will bring to Alder’s Blood, so keep the feedback flowing, we really want it!


To ensure the quality of the new updates we created a special testing environment for it. We created a special branch on Steam called “experimental”, where the new build will be uploaded. This branch is available to everybody and instructions on how to access it are listed below.

DISCLAIMER: We cannot guarantee saves compatibility between the two of the branches. The main branch saves should work on experimental just fine, but not the other way around.




First, you need to right-click on Alder’s Blood in your library. Choose preferences and then “Betas” bookmark. From a dropdown menu choose “experimental” and wow, you just have access to the new branch.

When you would like to come back to the main branch, choose NONE - Opt-out of all beta programs.

Since we are a small team of 6 people there is still a possibility that this update will not be perfect. We want to give it a spin for a few days in this testing environment and tinker a bit in various values, see your feedback and react with changes.

We will keep the update on the experimental branch for a couple of days and when we decide it’s ready, we will push it to the main branch.
We will keep this branch operating and use it to test some other ideas for balance, new weapons, items, and features. With your feedback, we believe we can make this game better.

After patch 1.0.5, we will introduce the first content update. It will feature a new hunter skin, more avatars and color variations for already existing skins. We will also add more random missions, so you can have more to do in between main and side quests.



Changes:

• Changed the way corruption is applied to hunters. Now only hostile hunter actions will build-up corruption. Corruption values on weapons have been readjusted, and the negative traits threshold has been increased.
  
• Changed Hangman’s Finger Charm to decrease the corruption build-up on a hunter who equips it. Multiple charms of this kind can be equipped to increase the effect.
  
• Small changes in damage values/stamina costs on Double-barreled Shotgun and Marksman Rifle.
  
• Added a button to the options menu on missions to open the Codex.
  
• Added “E” keyboard shortcut for weapon swapping.
  
• Updated City’s Outskirts graphics.
  
• Re-enabled ironman mode.

Fixes

• Fixed broken cinematics during some of the missions.
  
• Fixed an issue, where taking a freshly recruited hunter on a mission cause various issues.
  
• Fixed “Critical Damage” sound not taking sound settings into consideration.
  
• Fixed weather widget tooltip not showing up.
  
• Fixed an issue, where a monster walking through multiple traps would freeze the game.
  
• Fixed “Kill all monsters” objective counting non-killable enemies.
  
• Fixed sleeping enemies getting awake on save load.
  
• Fixed conversation voices not being affected by the Voices sound volume slider.
  
• Fixed an issue with stat-based Steam achievements.
  
• Fixed a couple of missing and wrong translations.
  
• Fixed strategy voices and weak damage indicator not respecting game volume settings.
  
• Fixed mission restarting killing hunters in the next loaded save.
  
• Fixed autosave using only the last save slot.
  
• Fixed darkness morphing any enemy (even those essential to an objective).
  
• Fixed older saves missing on new events.
  
• Fixed resisted damage text being too small.
  
• Fixed Deathwalker status indicator.

• Random events are temporarily disabled.

Thank you and stay safe!
Your Shockworks

A small update has just been released that overhauls how the game views solve progress. This should fix all issues where the game is a bit too generous when determining if a puzzle is solved.

Please let us know if you still encounter any bugs.

Trials of Fire Weekly Update (v0.50) Release Notes


Good afternoon all,

This week’s update features a new set of class cards across all 7 existing Heroes to discover as well as some balance changes to some lesser used class cards and item abilities.

This week we’ve also been focusing on putting together a fully localised version of the game (Simplified Chinese).

As always, let us know what you think on Discord!



Card Changes

• ‘Defensive Movement’ (Warrior) – Decreased cost to 0 (from 2) and Resilience to 3 (from 4).
  
• ‘Inferno’ (Elementalist) – Changed effect to, ‘Every character takes 3 Magic Damage per stack of Burning.’
  
• ‘Static Discharge’ (Elementalist) – Increased range of initial target to 2 (from 1).
  
• ‘Overload’ (Elementalist) – Increased cost to 2 (from 1) and increased stacking damage bonus to 2 (from 1).
  
• ‘Regroup!’ (Warlord) – Changed effect to, ‘Remove a stack from each named effect on friendly characters. Draw 1 card if any stacks removed.’
  
• ‘Cunning Offense’ – Reduced cost to 1 (from 2).
  
• ‘Shared Strength’ – Changed effect to, ‘Each Hero that has played 2] or more cards this turn draws 2 cards.’
  
• ‘Wing Smash’ – Increased cost to 1 (from 0) and changed effect to, ‘Melee Damage 1 and Push 4 on all adjacent enemies. Any targets that take damage discard 1 card.’
  
• ‘Skulk’ – Increased movement to 4 (from 3).
  
• ‘Dark Rite’ – Changed effect to, ‘Melee Attack 2. If this attack deals damage, choose 1 from up to 3 Damage cards from your deck, draw it and half its Willpower cost.’
  
• ‘Channelling’ – Reduced cost to 2 (from 3) and Willpower gained to 6 (from 7).

Let's blast some demons while we fly over the ruins of this mega-city.

A pity, you can't hear the exceptional Heavy Metal soundtrack that accompanies this massacre. ;)

We are working hard to realize the first trailer for the game and open the Steam store page.

Stay tuned!

New Flash Packs are out now, featuring stars past and present from around the globe. Add Galaxy Opal Yao Ming, Pink Diamond Pau Gasol, Diamond Nic Batum and more.

Available now through April 24.