Greetings, Pilots-

This week, things are getting a bit monstrous in the World Volta Association. Our latest update, which you can read about HERE, uncovered some creature-feature fuel in the form of new costumes for a handful of our favorite crew members. We’re getting things started this weekend with Sheldon’s spooktacular Kaiju costume, which will undoubtedly send chills down even the most courageous pilot’s spine.

Running from 10/31 at 12PM Pacific through 11/1 12PM Pacific, you’ll be able to battle it out with your fellow Volta pilots in a 24-hour leaderboard challenge event. Those of you who finish in the top spots will acquire Sheldon’s monstrous new style, along with some Credits. Those who finish outside the top tier will have a chance to earn additional Credits, along with some incredibly valuable resources.

• Tier 1 Winners: Sheldon Kaiju Costume, 80 Credits
  
• Tier 2 Winners: Mainframe (x1), Hypercharged Plasma (x2), 60 Credits
  
• Tier 3 Winners: Hypercharged Plasma (x2), 40 Credits
  
• Tier 4 Winners: Caustic Ooze (x4), 20 Credits

While we welcome pilots new and old, and from a range of skill levels, we’ll be banning the following equipment for this event: the Heat Ray (Shoulder), Heat Ray (Hand), and the Beam Saber. It’s the perfect time to test out some of the new weapons added in our latest update, and to scare your opponents with brilliant new strategies.

The WVA will continue to host events like this in the future, so stay tuned for regular updates on when and where you’ll be able to play, and more importantly, what you’ll be able to win. Good luck to all those who enter… if you DARE!

Good news! We found that the online multiplayer facilitator was ... not ... doing that for a while. It's been kicked, and now should be working at full speed getting people together regardless of whatever weird network topologies and setups you have at your house.

If you're having problems connecting to friends with this update, be sure to let us know at @no_goblin on Twitter! If you're having trouble matchmaking and finding random people online, well, let's be honest: this is a four year game that didn't establish a multiplayer community on Steam. You might be waiting a little while. We still love you though, and we hold out hope that you'll find The One while waiting on the information superhighway.

-NG

Thank you for your reports!
A nasty bug, which prevented you from sacrificing your minions was fixed, you can do it now again.
Just remember, not every minion fits for a sacrifice, they should be alive. E.g. living corpses or Madame Mandilip's dolls can not be sacrificed by design.


Please, report your bugs and concerns here: https://forms.gle/qpcneQh1D6ynbW9T8

Based on the science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – the inspiration behind Blade Runner), The Great C is a cinematic virtual reality narrative set in the aftermath of an apocalyptic event.

Years after a catastrophic incident, a powerful AI driven supercomputer called the Great C rules over the remnants of humanity. Each year a nearby village is forced to send a young person on a pilgrimage to “report” to the Great C – a journey from which no one ever returns.

The Great C follows Clare, a young woman who finds her life upended when her fiancé is summoned for this year’s pilgrimage. Forced to leave the safe confines of her village, Clare must now decide whether to accept the rules of this harsh society or fight against the oppressive reality of her world.

AWARDS:
Best Cinematic VR Experience, Cannes XR (2020)
Best Narrative, Animation, Dreamland XR (2020)
Two time Cannes Lions Finalist (2019)
Two time Indigo Design Award Winner (2019)
Siggraph, Official Selection (2019)
Aesthetica Film Festival, Official Selection (2019)
Finalist, Film of The Year, VR Awards (2019)
Premiered at the Venice Film Festival (2018)

This update brings – besides many smaller fixes and improvements – a further reworking of the sales prices and revenues.

First, after your feedback, a fourth sales difficulty level was added: realistic. In this level all sales prices and proceeds have, well, completely realistic values.

In addition, the bale prices have been significantly reduced and have been given their own difficulty multipliers (easy: 3 / medium: 2.25 / difficult: 1.5 / real: 1). Field grass and field grass silage bales (hay not included) are now worth almost nothing.

The biogas plant has received an extended revision and now uses much more realistic data as a basis for the revenue calculation. On the one hand, the ensiled fruit types now produce more real (i.e. lower) biogas quantities, on the other hand, the prices for methane gas have been adjusted. The generated energy has been split into electrical and thermal energy, with different prices. One kWhel results in a base price of €0.143, one kWhth results in a base price of €0.03 (the prices are slightly higher during winter and slightly lower during summer). The BGP control display has been adjusted accordingly.
In addition, the BGA has received its own price multiplier: (easy: 5 / medium: 3.5 / hard: 2 / realistic: 1).
Note: there is now a fermentation period of 20 days, which means the money generated from the silage loaded into the bunker — resp. the generated methane gas — is only paid out after this period.

Together with the BGP and grain price changes, it’s no longer lucrative to buy grain and unload it directly at the BGP.

A few calculation examples:
The BGA silos have a capacity of approx. 5,800 m³. This corresponds to approx. 33.7 ha of maize chaff. If you fill the silos completely over a season, you get approx. (minus personnel and machine costs):
Real: 55.200 €
Hard: 110.400 €
Medium: 193.200 €
Easy: 276.000 €
The same area planted with barley results in (threshed, i.e. with significantly less work and time required) approx.:
Real: 18.000 €
Hard: 54.100 €
Medium: 99.300 €
Easy: 144.400 €

As always, all changes can be found in the changelog.

Changelog

NEW

• Additional sales price mode "Realistic", which offers completely realistic values
  
• Vehicles can now be cleaned at the contractor
  
• Claas Jaguar and Tucano have received unload chute/rear view cameras that can be activated in the cockpit displays.

BUG FIX

• Analog devices in missions now show icons for both axis directions if only one axis direction is bound
  
• When grass grows back after a complete drying cycle and is then cut again, it is no longer immediately dry
  
• In the scenarios the memory consumption has been reduced when fast forwarding, this should also fix crashes and freezes of the game in those situations
  
• Display on Hammer MixKing repaired (digit size and position increased)
  
• Finance menu: better support for long dealer, tank and FillType names
  
• FillTypes that can’t be sold at the harbor are no longer displayed in the finance menu
  
• Animals no longer spawn outside the boxes
  
• Tutorial "Field Guidance System II": Spelling fixes
  
• Vehicle recovery window: spelling fixes
  
• Claas Jaguar: when all-wheel drive is deactivated, the front axle is now correctly powered instead of the rear axle
  
• Biogas plant silos can be uncovered correctly again
  
• Missing textures of the Deutz tow pin hitch added
  
• Hammer TransferKing: reflection of the tires adjusted
  
• All tractors and harvesters (except Deutz 7250) received new animations for indicator/gear/direction levers. The protective rubbers no longer rotate to the wrong direction.
  
• Crash during fast forwarding with rented equipment or loaned employees fixed

CHANGE

• Bale sales prices reduced, custom difficulty multipliers added
  
• Biogas plant revenues strongly revised:
  
• Methane gas: revenue divided into electrical and thermal energy, with an amount of €0,143 resp. €0,03 per kWh
  
• Biogas yield of all fruit types reduced to real values
  
• Trader icons are now displayed in the finance menu
  
• Trader icons have received a uniform design
  
• Traders in the finance menu are now sorted alphabetically
  
• The weight-based sales price multiplier of the animals is now smoothly interpolated between the weight groups, so that there are no more steps
  
• Claas front loader FL 100 rotates the arms to transport position when autopilot / tasks are used. An attached shovel or bale fork is also rotated to the top
  
• The fee for selling animals via the menu is now based on the distance from the animal to trader
  
• Cleaning vehicles takes longer, progress indicator added
  
• Price fluctuations added for swath and chopped fruits
  
• Start money amount of scenario 3 increased
  
• Fruit reference texts now show correct units when the game uses imperial units
  
• Tutorial "Thresh grain": Start position of the Vario trailer optimized

NOTES

• Tucano-/Jaguar-Camera-Displays can get a wrong on-off-status when the engine is turned off/on too quickly

Hello everyone,

This week we have managed to get the first version of the breeding features into the game. I dare not try to predict precisely when we will be updating the build but next week we will be in the phase of putting all our changes together and making final tweaks so hypothetically if we were to be successful then next weekend would be the time to upload it for you all to play.

Breeding Timelapse:



This is a timelapse that shows how fish breeding works. Some might say it works too well because we start off with only one male and one female and after a while there is close to one hundred fish in the aquarium. This will be tweaked before we release the next update and for many months afterwards. Each fish species will have their own set of needs that must be satisfied before they are comfortable enough to breed. It will be quite easy to breed guppies and zebra danios for instance but a bit harder to breed the betta fish.

The fish will be able to decide who they partner with. The exact parameters will be different from species to species. It might be quite common that fish may reject other fish based on their health, stress, age etc.

Breeding Timelapse 2:


Here is a slightly more closeup view of the breeding. You can see fry swimming about and the more larger juvenile fish. You might also notice some wacky behaviour from the adults. The mating behaviour is something that will be tweaked endlessly. At the moment they just travel towards each other and stare lovingly into each other's eyes which is very romantic.

There will of course be bubble nests and live births added in the near future but we have to start simple and get more complex over time.


Plumbing System:


Here is a quick look at the plumbing setup for this aquarium. Oxygen, Co2 and nutrients are all being pumped into the water when they detect that levels are too low. This is using the auto-enable feature that we showed last week. There is also only a single passive filter to keep things clean. We will also be adding all the updates to models and textures of plumbing objects in the next build too.


This post can't be too long tonight because there is lots of work to do and not enough hours to do it in.

Feel free to ask questions and I'll try to answer them in detail when I have a spare moment each day.

As usual we wish you all a great weekend,

The Fishery Team

Just a small hotfix: the "hide skeletons" option was working a little too well!

• Fixed clients being invisible if you have the "hide skeletons" option enabled during the Halloween event.

Happy Halloween!

Check out the October Contest winners and entries

Create an Open-air gallery space (outdoors) centered around your favorite artist, up to 6x6x6 expansions.
Winners will be chosen based on originality, creativity, and performance/accessibility.

Entries open Nov 1st - Nov 22nd
Winners will be chosen by Nov 30th

5 winners will receive;

• Either 5 upload codes or our soundtrack DLC (Art codes can be gifted to anyone even if they don't play the game)
  
• 2 million cubes
  
• Your gallery featured in the new teleport menu (terms apply)
  
• A choice of one of six special masks (can you collect them all?)

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[/list]

• All entries must be submitted by midnight EST on Nov 22nd.
  
• Galleries must be open-air and no larger than 6 wide, 6 long, and 6 high. (expansions)
  
• Entries must be entirely made in-game.
  
• You may enter one time.
  
• Galleries should be available until the end of December.
  
• Art uploads must follow our upload guidelines

Submit all entries via this form

Tank Mechanic Simulator is set to be on -40% sale, till 2th of November 10:05AM PST time. Grab it when you can ;)



Happy Halloween!

Thanks and have a good one!

DeGenerals