20201101 What’s good, gamers? Alright, so… You know how sometimes you don’t know how old something is getting and how crappy it looks until you get a new one? Well… That’s what happened with our first ship! “Extail”, the only ship available since the beginning, was just a placeholder for the longest time but we finally got a new ship in the hanger. Acipiter joins the skies and holy cannoli is it an upgrade. Someday Extail will get a revamp and not look like such a relic but we’re going to work on a propeller plane first before getting to that. What? Propeller planes don’t go 900mph? Well… Ours do!
Completed
Audio: New ship: Engine
Acipiter: Refinement, Texturing
Bullets hitting a ship causes flakes of color to fall off
Steam: Updated: Screenshots, Video
Ship-change function
Next
Audio: Acipiter: Boost release. Prop: Bootup
New ship: Prop: Concept, Model
Race-end screen revamp
Post-race screen
Tutorial video
Loading screen revision to include track preview and hints/tips
Trail opacity modified to be less cluttering on-screen
Marketing: Research best practices, Contact streamers
Hello, everyone! I, Roboron, have the great pleasure of opening the first Simutrans Steam Screenshot Contest (or, as I like to call it, "SSSC"). This is also the first contest the Simutrans Community has started in over 4 years, so we are very excited! And we have a good reason. The prize for the winners is... to be displayed on the Steam Store Page!
TL;DR
Participation is opened now. You can submit your screenshots to the "Screenshots" section of the community Hub. You need to include a title and the pakset used. You can submit as many screenshots as you want, until December 21st.
Note: I have updated the game to preventing F12 from displaying the help windows. That treacherous window won't spoil your screenshots anymore!
Participation
1 - There's a category for every pakset (including workshop paksets and the yet unavailable pak128.cs). 2 - You can submit as many screenshots as you want. 3 - You only need to submit your screenshots to the "Screenshots" section of the community Hub. 4 - You need to include title and category (pakset) for every screenshot. Screenshots without title or category will not be eligible. 5 - You have until December 21st to submit your screenshots!
Theme and guidelines
1 - The theme is... Transport structures! (Unoriginal, you say?). Let's show new players what is possible to build with Simutrans. A great train station? Perfect! An amazing road network! Sweet! An underground complex? Wow! A country road with nothing more than grass? Not so impressive... 2 - To keep screenshots clean, try to disable city/station names and avoid showing title bars, overcrowded menus, etc. 3 - While I won't impose any limits to screenshot size, recommended size is 1920x1080 as this is the most common resolution.
Prizes
1 - For the first winner of each category: The screenshot will be displayed on the main Simutrans Store Page, alongside the winners of all categories. 2 - For the second winner of each category: The screenshot will be used as the header for the pakset DLC. 3 - For the third winner of each category: The screenshot will be used as the background of the pakset store page. 4 - For winners 1-10 of each category: The screenshot will be displayed on the pakset store page (or workshop) page.
Voting
Voting will be done on a wiki survey (I will post a new announcement when the time comes). Everyone (participants and non-participants) can vote, but you can only vote one time per category. If two or more screenshots have the same votes, our benevolent dictator will benevolently select a winner, taking into account theme and guidelines.
Participation via other platforms
Apart from Steam, you can participate through the following platforms (don't forget to include title and category):
Well, well, my stalkers of maids. The time has come. As in, here, right now, is the time to pay attention. Are you paying attention? You are? Good.
Maid Mansion Release Date - November 13th, 2020
You'll be entering the mansion on November 13th. We plan to go live sometime around 9pm EST / 6pm PST that evening. Critical Bliss, our publisher, has given us their complete support in that release date, and will be helping us ramp up excitement as we get closer to that date.
Right now, Belgerum is working really hard on getting everything done for the final release, and he should be right on time. I've been able to keep testing builds as he goes, and am loving it (obviously). He's done fantastic work, and I'm truly grateful for how well it's looking.
Hope you guys are all excited to see it!!
Maid Mansion Trailer
We should also have a brand new trailer ready to go by the end of this week, so it'll definitely be ready in time for release before the 13th. WhiteCharisma has done a great job so far, and he'll be working the next couple days to iron out the last few details and requests we had for the video. It's a great little 56 second trailer to get you in the proper maid mood.
Final Thank You
For all the hundreds of people that supported us years ago on Kickstarter and have waited all this time, thank you. To all of you thousands out there that have added Maid Mansion to your WISHLIST here on STEAM, thank you for that as well! We have updated our STEAM page to reflect our release date, and welcome you to join us when we launch. If you drag some other people along with you to buy up some of that maid action, I won't say no to that... Honestly, it would really help us on launch, as well as any (hopefully) positive reviews too, if you like the game, would be super awesome too.
After launch, please be sure to bring us anything you find and we will of course try our best to fix it as quickly as possible! Belgerum already has several games out so this release probably feels kinda standard for him, but I can be a bit of a nervous wreck. But I want to do my best for our CrazyCactus fans, so we're making Maid Mansion to be something I hope you'll enjoy.
Okay so this update was a HUGE wall of text. But I hope you enjoyed it. Perhaps my next update will be shorter and sweeter with just sharing our trailer video. :D
See you soon!
--Cactus a.k.a. The Paul Revere of "THE MAIDS ARE COMING, THE MAIDS ARE COMING!!" ;)
So just to reiterate what I've been saying for a couple of devlogs, the development of Bright Red Skies is going to be halted for a while so that I can improve on other game development skills I feel are lacking. I like to just keep you guys updated since Bright Red Skies is my dream game, and I just want you to know that at some point it'll get completed, but it's probably going to be a long while from now.
I've been trying to plan out how I want to approach my personal growth as a game developer and the development of my side projects (including BRS). So currently, my goal is to release my mobile game project sometime before the end of this year and begin working on a new project that I plan on being more of a commercial game that I would play.
The main objective of this new mobile game, was mainly to bolster my game portfolio, learn a bit of backend, and learn better optimization techniques in Unity (such as DOTS) so that I can make better-performing games going forward in my career. For October, I managed to get player login to work using a guest account or Google Play account, built the title screen with a hub world, and created the main loop where you go into gameplay combat and gain rewards. It may not look pretty but I'm more focused on function for this game.
After this mobile game gets completed, I'm currently planning on making a new commercial game to be released on Steam. In general, I'd say making PC and console games is what I want to do most, so creating and releasing a game on Steam would be a huge step! Because of the scope of Bright Red Skies, it's clear that its release will be years away since I can only work on my side projects part-time. So the best solution I see is to create a much smaller scope game and spend 70% of my free time on this new game and 30% of BRS. There's still a lot in terms of story structure and characters that need to be fleshed out in BRS and spending 30% of my time on that should be plenty. I still need to think about what new game I'd like to make but I'm targetting a 1-year start-to-end completion cycle.
Thanks for taking the time to read this devlog about all that's going on! There's a long road ahead until Bright Red Skies gets released, but I'm optimistic that it will have its time where it can be playable! I'll be back with some more updates next month, appreciate you guys :)
- Full-screen is available. - Escape option brings you to the main menu instead of closing the entire program. - Losing a match now gives you the option to go to the main menu. - Fertility's "Offspring" attack functions properly on the CPU's side. It now places out the correct character that she brought into her Group. Previously, it would sometimes place her back out in a Defeated state, rendering the match over. - Menu scrolling stays within boundaries of the screen. - Chapter Select menu can be directly cancelled out of. - Selecting an already selected character does not cause an error anymore. Problem occurred when the highlight effect graphic (yellow border) was selected, instead of the actual character, and the code would try to use its name as a character ID. It now only accepts character icons as valid selections. - Resetting character selections makes them available as potential opponents again. Previously, the selected characters would be taken from the list of potential opponents completely, even if they weren't selected for your Group anymore. - Main Menu buttons were positioned more toward the center to completely be out of view when using the Chapter Select. - Audio is muted when the game is set inactive in the background. - An underwater stage had lighting effects enhanced to match an underwater setting.
Missed last week's devlog, since I was moving to a new place. Dev has been a bit sidelined due to this, but is now back on track. Version 0.42 will see the last density of 2x2 hotels, as well as the third 4x4 hotel set. New hotel buildings pictured below.
Since tourism is now getting fairly well tweaked, a tourism tutorial will also be added - as usual, english version will come first and additional languages will be added later on.
I plan on also getting a first set of 3x3 industry implemented to add more variation to industrial areas. Since remaking the growth system for zones, it's much easier to add "unfinished" sets, so I can add them in as I go.
UI is starting to need a proper clean up, so that is something that will be started up too. There are also some clarifications that need to be added to certain parts of the UI (like showing off when a building can and can't grow for example).
I've still not finished work on blimps, so that will be seeing more work and hopefully there will be a somewhat functional blimp movement system going in the game.
DemonCrawl's Halloween Event has officially ended! We hope you enjoyed the spooky festivities and managed to avoid the sharp end of Maniac's cleaver.
Now that things are returning to normal (Maniac was prosecuted for his crimes and hauled off to a federal supermax prison somewhere) we have released a new content patch that includes 5 exciting stage mods, 6 new items, and a big rework for Demolitionist II.
We have also updated the stage completion logic such that you no longer have to open burning cells to achieve victory. This is an important change for specific stage mod combinations such as Nightmare + Burning.
In other news:
Celebrate Day of the Dead with a new community-created avatar! Everyone will receive the Mrs. Calavera avatar for free over the next couple hours - no promo code necessary. Thank you so much to Cubear for creating this awesome cosmetic and for allowing us to distribute it to the entire community.
Full patch notes are below. Enjoy!
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New Features
Halloween event is over (farewell Maniac)
New stage mod: Dumb - "Lose your mastery at the start of the stage. Gain your mastery at the end of the stage."
New stage mod: Lawless - "Kill a visible object whenever the sum of your chain is 20 or greater. At the end of the stage, visible objects attack you for 1 damage each."
New stage mod: Seismic - "When you open half of all empty cells, relocate and unflag everything."
New stage mod: Psychotic - "Negate mistake damage. Visible monsters have a 3% chance to attack you each turn."
New positive stage mod: Feeble - "Monsters have a 50% chance to flee instead of attacking you."
New passive item: Snake Skin - "At the start of each stage, drop half of your inventory on the ground."
New passive item: Blissful Gut - "Right-click to consume the first item in your inventory and restore 1 life."
New magic item: Magnet - "Relocate the closest visible object to target visible cell."
New consumable item: Plum - "Expand the radius of your next targetable magic item by 1."
New omen: Rocking Chair - "Whenever your mastery's ultimate ability is activated, lose your mastery."
New omen: Glass Knuckles - "You cannot powerchord. Whenever you chord a 1, lose 1 life." (Created by Egg)
Added Nomad that sells Dolls
Added Hero Trial effect related to monster density
Added Mrs. Calavera avatar by Cubear (Day of the Dead reward!)
Added Emerald Knight avatar by Cubear
Added Emberflame avatar, adapted by Cubear
Quality of Life
Burning cells no longer have to be opened in order to complete a stage
Tweaked the appearance of a few stage mod sprites
Added board zoom support for several particle effects
The item pool is now re-filtered whenever your mastery changes, e.g. when you gain a tier 3 mastery from Academy
Updated Guardian II description for clarity
Android only: the mastery ultimate ability is now activated with longtap
Balance Changes
Demolitionist II rework: "Whenever you complete a stage with 10% monster density or less, the next stage gains the Feeble mod."
Viral stage mod rework: "If you're injured at the start of the stage, duplicate your omens. If you're injured at the end of the stage, the next stage gains Viral."
Guild Bond nerf: duration lowered from 100 seconds to 25 seconds