Hey Grims! Oak here again.

We're very excited to be on the front page of Steam today! I hope you're all having a great day, wherever or whenever you may be :)

So yeah.. Hi! Hello to everyone new and hello to everyone who's already been with us. To those who are new here, Death and Taxes is a satirical take on an age-old character. You are the Grim Reaper... on an office job. That's pretty much it! Give the game a try if that sounds intriguing to you ^_^

I don't have too much to tell you other than how thankful we are for your continuous involvement in our community! The game is still growing, bit by bit. That shows in our Discord, right here on Steam and also in our sale numbers! We've officially crossed 100 000 copies sold! Holy macaroni. Thank you all for supporting us <3


Although we're not actively working on Death and Taxes anymore, we do want to keep up localization efforts. More about that in the near future.

But new stuff is on the horizon! Most of our time right now is going into a new not-fully-announced-but-kinda-is project, Here's a teaser from our resident concept artist Raido




When we have more to say about the project I'll be sure to let you know :)
In the meanwhile, you are more than welcome to have a guess at what we're working on.

But enough about that!

Here's some new fan art!




By an_apowell




By RAzcake




By persimmonpollywog

Hope you enjoyed some of these awesome creations by our fans ^_^

Be seeing you, Grims!


Much love,
-Death and Taxes

• New rooms layouts! Some rooms are now unique and only appear once in the dungeon.
  
• New kinda special rooms! (yep) These one don't appear on the mini-map but are different enough from the normal rooms.
  
• New unlockable Body & Head colors!

• Replaced the fire left on the ground by the fire Jumpers by the same one left by the Fire Boots.
  
• You can't damage your friends with the Thunder Baton anymore but they still conduct electricity so you can use them to make a nice chain.

• Fixed an issue where the special room with the lasers would start each time someone entered the room.
  
• Fixed an issue where the player in spirit wouldn't transform into a monster because he's haunting a specific player instead of a team. (and if that player let his teammate enter the room before him, the transformation wasn't triggering)
  
• Multiple little optimizations to make the game smoother.

As time went on, I realised that three-months cycle for HDYLIEM development is the best. Three months is a good chunk of time to make meaningful changes to the game. And it is not long enough so players start thinking that the game was abandoned.

The first month I always spend refactoring and improving the game's code base and implementing features that may not be that important right now, but will be very useful in the future. Why am I doing this? Because in the long run high-quality and resilient to changes code will undoubtedly win. It produces less bugs on each change and implementing new game mechanics or adding a content becomes a simple and pleasant process. Also some things are much easier to add on the earlier stages of the development because game architecture is still flexible.

Let me show you some examples.

In the current live version of the game, the planet surface in the spaceport or assembly shop is fake. I mean, there are a bunch of surface quads that I got from the flight on spaceport coordinates and saved as static meshes and then I am loading them with other buildings. I did that because 1.5 years ago planet generation and rendering was not that performant comparing to how it is working right now. There is one problem with that. Every time you launch the rocket game needs to create the whole planet. And every time you return back to the spaceport it needs to destroy the planet. It is a long process and that’s why these transitions were so long.

So I’ve changed that. Right now Earth is created when you load a spaceport for the first time. And if you go to the flight on the spacecraft that is located on the surface of the Earth or orbiting around it, nothing will be destroyed or created, because the planet is already there and ready for action. So what? There are a bunch of advantages to that:

• spaceport is located in a real place on the planet;
  
• transitions between spaceport/assembly shop and flight are much faster now;
  
• quality and performance settings affect planet surface in the spaceport/assembly too;
  
• spaceport could be located in any point on Earth;
  
• spaceport could be located on any planet in the Solar System.

The last two items from the list are not usable right now. But when I need to make a selector of the starting spaceport position or position and render a player's colony on Mars, it will be as simple as setting two coordinates for that.

While I worked on that, I decided to experiment a bit with the surface mesh triangulation. Here are some before and after screenshots:





Interestingly, that the triangles count is the same in both cases. Every even triangle just rotated 90 degrees relative to the previous one in the new triangulation algorithm

And in game result (you may click on them to compare in full resolution):




The change is subtle, but the surface no longer looks like it was stretched along one of the axes

It seems to me like such small details is an important part of what actually makes the game good.

Second month of the development cycle I usually spend on some big changes in the game that actually affect gameplay in some form. And the third month is the time for adding new rocket parts, small changes and improvements, local verification, testing and bugfixing.

The changes I made at the start of the second month were not so big but very important for the game. I decided to rework the navball UI. The current one is performing its function but is painful to look at. Here is some results of work:


How it is right now


How it will be

Navball UI moved to 3D and also has a heading angle value and a fuel amount indicator now. Also I’ve added two more rocket status indicators that are reserved for the future. Also if you hover the mouse over part of the navball it will show a tooltip describing its functionality.

The next thing I need to rework is the window that contains flight and environment stats. Like pressure, altitude etc. But I don’t want to just change this window. I want to make it so that if you want to get pressure, altitude, temperature or other values, you need to install an appropriate instrument on your rocket. Some command modules could contain some instruments already installed. For example “Vys” command module will most likely have an altimeter installed (you definitely don’t want to send a crewed spacecraft without this info). But for others command modules or probe cores it should be your decision what instruments to take on a flight. This will make rocket building a bit deeper and also will bring a bunch of new rocket parts into play. Cargo modules will become useful as well.

I have more features implemented at this moment, but I will hold on to them until the release which is planned at the end of June.

The last thing I want to talk about is the game modes. Right now I am working exclusively on Sandbox, because you can incrementally improve the game and release an update every three months or so. This is all good but the game was about spaceport building at the start of this project, so I am planning to release two more Sandbox updates (this and the next one) and switch to the Survival mode development. The problem with this one, is that it could only be released when it will be mostly ready with the finished and solid game loop and good progression system. It means that most of my work will be hidden until this mode will be finished. But I will still try to make a release once in three months including content and changes related to the Sandbox.

Hope you enjoyed this dev blog, see you in the next update!

P.S. Here is one more work-in-progress screenshot, just for you.

We are improving the UI as a whole.
The UI that was revealed in the previous demo version had several problems since those had been developed without any other features. Therefore, when new features came out, there was a lack of spaces or connections between each UI. Among various updated UIs, we are going to introduce UI for Dialogue in this patch note.

The 'Dialogue' is one of the most appeared UI in the Little Witch in the Woods. However, it also had several problems, even though it is very crucial to the game. The issues that we have recognized so far are

1. The space that UI is taking up during the Dialogue is too big, so there is no spare space that other UI can fit in,
   
2. The interlocutor's portrait is located on the top of UI, while Ellie's portrait is located on the bottom of UI,
   
3. and many of users did not notice that Virgil is talking.

<Dialogue UI from the demo version. 3/4 of the screen is taken by portraits and the Dialogue UI>


The image below is an updated UI based on the issues that are mentioned above.


<It's not 100% completed UI, so please just take as reference only>

• First of all, we reduced the size of the Dialogue UI.
  We reduced marginal spaces that are not used while keeping the font sizes to maintain legibility.
  
• We also rearranged portraits at the bottom side of the screen to make their eye levels in the same line. This will help you get into the game and Dialogue while actually feeling each character's size.
  
• We put some animation effect on speech bubbles of Virgil so it can be thought that some special being, not a human being, is talking.

Our team is quite satisfied with those updates since it seems like most of the recognized issues have been improved so far.






We added a new feature, 'keyword.'
'Keyword' is specific words that you can earn while playing the game.

Ellie can start a Dialogue with earned keywords, then NPC will talk about that specific keyword. It is similar to a 'topic' of our daily Dialogue.

The keyword will be a core feature to process quests that will be given to Ellie. Other than the Dialogue, Ellie also can buy some items by using the 'shop' keyword to NPCs who are selling items.


<It's not 100% completed UI, so please just take as reference only.>

• Like the above image, if you try to talk to NPC, a list of keywords will appear, and you can choose an appropriate keyword by scrolling the list.
  
• We newly added this feature because since the story is very important in the Little Witch in the Wood, we would like to help users be more active in the story.

We hope you can also experience the same thing we initially aimed for while using the keyword feature.






We added a new feature, 'sound.'

It is not sound effects or background music from the game. It is a feature that makes creatures in the game recognize Ellie's sound while walking or running in the forest.

You can only catch Fairy Butterfly or One Eyed Frog by swinging a butterfly net after getting closer quietly to them. This feature was temporarily systemized in the demo version, but now we completely systemized it so Ellie and creatures can interact with each other more smoothly in various places.


<You can see that the sound is spread out under Ellie's feet in the system.>


This is the end of today's Dev Log, and we will be back with the following Dev Log soon.

Unleash your inner beast! Don a beast form, team up with allies, and battle other wizards in an attempt to capture points and control the Avalon map. Earn incredible rewards like Gold Beastmoon Idols, Lunari, Beastmoon Seeds, and much more in the process!

Play anytime during the event! Here are some suggested playtimes where you may see more players available: TUE-FRI @ 4pm CT, SAT @ 11am CT, SUN @ 8pm CT, MON @ 11am CT.

This event ends on Monday, June 7th.

Check out the official Events Calendar for updates.

Greetings Adventurers!

We have some exciting news about the future for Project Witchstone that we’ve been waiting to talk about until it was 100% locked in, and now that we have it all set in stone we can tell everyone about it. Originally when we came up with the idea for Witchstone we’d considered plans to run a Kickstarter as a way to generate the funding needed to develop the game. We’re a small studio, and while we’re lucky to have had success in the past with games like Stories and Omensight, funding the development of a game takes a lot more money than most would think, especially with a plan for a game that extends into multiple years of development.



Since Witchstone represented a step up from our previous work as far as scope and ambition, we knew we’d need to have a plan for any contingency, thus the original plan to Kickstart the game into Early Access while we worked on it further if that’s what it took to be funded. But as you know, Early Access development comes with its own challenges. As we worked further on the game we realized that it would likely be hard to deliver the quality we were aiming for while also having the ticking clock of making good on crowdfunding expectations as well as supporting public-facing Early Access updates. Over time we’d looked into some options of how we could not only continue development on the game without needing to crowdfund, but also in a way that would allow us to not have to scale back the planned game design, which would have been a major compromise from the original plan for the game.




We’re happy to be able to say that as of right now, Witchstone’s development is funded. We have the time and backing we need to fully finish the game, as we’d originally intended, without needing to make gameplay quality compromises to deliver by a date dictated by crowdfunding or early access concerns. This is such an exciting situation for us, and really a best case scenario for fans.

What exactly does this mean for Project Witchstone? Well first off it means that we’re able to go heads-down on development and really give our all to making Witchstone everything we know it can be. It also means that with the ability to pursue the full-scope version of the game that we’d always wanted to, we’re extending our development into the foreseeable future. As we get closer to major milestones, we hope to be able to talk about dates, but as of right now the timeline for development extends beyond 2021 at minimum.



It’s hard to exactly quantify the major changes this allows us to make, but it’s fair to say that the difference in what a player will receive as a finished game with this approach is going to be night and day. Without funding and extended deadlines, we were looking at a reduced experience if we were forced to release it on a shortened deadline. When you’re trying to tackle a new type of game as a studio, it can often be a bit of a learning curve internally with regards to how long you’re looking at for total development. In this case for us, as the game became more and more functional, we realized just how good it would be if we could take it all the way to it’s best version instead of looking for ways to speed up development.




We’re still planning to post updates online when we feel like we’ve got something cool to share, but with an extended timeline, we’re going to shift away from a regular post-plan so that we’re not borrowing time from development itself, as well as having to worry about showing off things that may later change, thus extending timelines even farther. For those of you interested in knowing what we’re up to, head over to our studio’s social media channels where we’re going to do our best to be a bit more active. Over the last year as we’ve been working from home and so focused on the project, we realized we wanted to still have a way to connect with fans, but it makes the most sense to centralize the efforts into one place for the time being so we can spend most of our time on the game development itself!

Spearhead Twitter: @SpearheadMtl
Spearhead Instagram: @SpearheadMtl
Spearhead Newsletter: Click here to subscribe

We appreciate all of your support over the years, and especially the fans who are excited for Project Witchstone. We know that waiting is always tough, but with this opportunity, we know we can deliver an experience that will have been worth the patience. We’d never be where we are without the fans, and so we’re working to say thank you the best way we can, by doing our absolute best work.

-Spearhead Games Team

New fighter systems, new aircraft kill effects, more realistic battlefield maps

What's up BipNation!

Update number two is definitely tiny, but hopefully you're gonna love it.


I ran into some issues making more crazy holes for an upcoming course (see discord for a sneak peek). So I popped the hood and dug into the gnarly bip-physics guts and played with some constants and dials.

I think the result is a much richer bip experience and I hope you like it.


I would be amazed if I haven't introduced any fun new physics bugs. I've already been blown away by how helpful you've been reporting bugs with screenshots / videos etc, keep it up! The best place to report bugs is in our discord: https://discord.gg/xVh8Ph64w4


We've also hit the huge milestone of 1k wishlists on Steam! This has really fired me and the rest of the Cowfish Gang up to finish off our roadmap to launch and get our first content update out to you to play with.

Love and Bips
Matt

Progress is flying this month so we thought we'd bring you some highlights from all the things going on at the office here in Stockholm. This milestone we're working on that storied checkpoint in game development, the vertical slice. Focusing our efforts on adding all of the world and UI elements into a single level will help lay the foundation for production in the months ahead.



* models for the Cave of Wonders arcade
* in-game animations for all of heroine Watts' band members
* the beginnings of our dialog rendering system
* three fantasticly funky sound packs for levels early on in the game

and more in-game features than we have space to list here!



The characters of Backbeat are coming to life with every expression our illustrators pen and each keyframe the animation team lays down in Maya. Over the summer we'll start showing more moving pictures and process, so stay tuned!


Wishlist Backbeat here on Steam and stay updated on important news and information about the game leading up to launch!


Excited about the brave new world of time-based musical puzzling? Cheer us on and let us know! We’d love nothing more than to hear your thoughts about anything and everything related to Backbeat. You can always leave a comment here on Steam or tap our shoulders over on social media to get the conversation started! 

Twitter - Facebook - Instagram - Youtube

Hello sensational Cities: Skylines community!

Now that the dust has settled after PDXCON Remixed, we know some of you are reminiscing about a few of our segments, or are disappointed that you missed out on something, so we have compiled this recap of all-things-Cities: Skylines that happened at PDXCON Remixed 2021, complete with time-stamped links directly to our panels, trailers, and announcements on Twitch and YouTube so that you won’t have to scroll endlessly through three days of content to find a specific thing to watch. We plan to have the cleaned-up full versions hosted on our YouTube channel sometime in the near future, but until then, here is where you can see the Cities: Skylines content at 2021 PDXCON Remixed (warning: the Twitch feed may jump around a bit).

Check out our recap of all-things-Cities: Skylines HERE: http://pdxint.at/CSPDXCON