May 29, 2021

People Playground - zooi

[1.18] - May 29 2021

Added

- Ion thruster
- Flintlock pistol
- Lance
- Most explosives heat up affected objects
- Utility workshop tag
- An alert that tells you which mods are significantly affecting load times
- Small button to export game debug info
- The toybox panel is now resizable
- Wooden furniture is now destructible

Changed

- Rewrote most Steam integration, mod loading, and contraption loading to be done in the background. This should fix the phenomenal startup times if you have hundreds of mods. Do note, however, that I can't control what modders make their mods do upon loading. Some mods may still freeze the game and there's nothing I can do to prevent that.
- This update will forcibly recompile all your installed mods. If you have lots of them, this will take a while. This will only happen once, though.
- Also switched to Facepunch's C# implementation of Steamworks which you won't really notice.
- Minor changes to some particle effects
- Completely changed the settings menu. It is no longer a weird game of Tetris
- Disallowed mods to use shady code (toggleable in settings)
- Tank shells are explosive
- Made humans less resilient to extreme ambient temperatures
- Light bulbs are less hot
- Slight texture changes
- Energy swords deflect blaster bolts and other energy projectiles
- Energy swords collide with other energy swords
- You can now stop resizing without having to right click the object specifically
- "Double delay" and "Half delay" type buttons are replaced with a simple number input dialog box.
- Fire spread radius decreased
- Replaced fireworks SFX
- Minor changes to firework particles
- Fireworks fuse length is now slightly randomised
- Minor performance improvements
- Changed blaster impact remnant effect
- Machine blaster bolt is slightly less bright
- Made all guns (for humans) much lighter and decreased their recoil
- Made the submachine gun a little smaller

Fixed

- Useless text in mod error description
- Red barrels being unreasonably hard to set off
- Bleeding particles appearing outside the bounding box of the limb
- Ambient temperature input permanently blocking user input
- Strange Tesla coil business
- Tank barrel displacement issues
- Phenomenal startup times if you have hundreds of Workshop subscriptions
- Infinite android "blood" amount
- A bug where you sometimes couldn't delete a contraption
- Other minor bugs

May 29, 2021

Director builds astonishing new art gallery from scratch during lockdown

Occupy White Walls - kelly

Many museums have created online galleries during the pandemic. But Pere Izquierdo Tugas, director of the Consorci del Patrimoni de Sitges, in Catalonia, has gone one better, creating a complete virtual version of the exhibition centre itself.

Pere Izquierdo, 57, an archaeologist and art historian, loves technology. “I'm a digital native,” he says. “I started using a computer in 1975, at the age of 12". Thus, when he discovered KULTURA/Occupy White Walls (OWW), a new online art platform and game with 80,000 galleries already created by players, he realized that he had found the right place to give visibility to the museums he directs and the art collections in them.

“We have an interesting collection, but it's not well known,” he explains. "Visitors are surprised when they see it". He first thought OWW would be just a way to show the collection during the lockdown. He then realised it could be a permanent way to show the centre and its collections to a wider global audience.

OWW is built around its pioneering art discovery AI that 'finds art you'd like, even if you don't know what art you like’. This is how it has already attracted tens of thousands of ‘non artsy’ gamers to engage with art and create their own virtual display spaces.

"Our mission is to spread art and OWW is an excellent opportunity to reach out to those who would love art but may not be very familiar with museums," continues Izquierdo. “We especially focus on young people, many of whom think that museums are sad and serious places. We must make them understand that we exist and make the works of art in our museums more popular ".

So he rolled up his sleeves and started building in his free time the environments of Sitges' museums by himself. Thus, was born a parallel architectural complex where you can spend a few hours among masterpieces of all times.

“First, we made a parallel version of the Sitges museums to show the paintings in rooms similar to the real ones.” I looked for the OWW elements most similar to those in reality, even if our decorations are very particular, so in part, it is my reworking. There are mosaics, stained glass windows, ceramics, freely inspired by those of real museums."

The online visit starts with the presentation in the Piazza dei Miracoli, one of the central places in the game. A short presentation tells the story of Sitges and its vocation to be an artistic and cultural centre. In an environment of great atmosphere, part of the square’s futuristic architecture, it is explained how, in 1891, Santiago Rusiñol, an artist of great charisma, first came to Sitges, a Catalan village near the sea, and created the cradle of Catalan Modernism. Rusiñol knew, and corresponded with, with all the great artists of Paris, from Toulouse-Lautrec to Degas.

One must-visit place in the game is the Museum of Cau Ferrat, Rusiñol’s home studio. It is an extraordinarily dense museum, with 2,700 objects in 400 square meters, including five Picassos.

The whole upper floor of Cau Ferrat is like a temple of the arts, with the three allegories created by Rusiñol that preside over the room like three apses in a church. There are 17 paintings by Ramon Casas, another Catalan Modernist great, works by Miquel Utrillo, lover of Suzanne Valadon and father of Maurice Utrillo. Among the most important pieces are two paintings by El Greco: The Penitent Magdalene and The Tears of St. Peter, as well as a collection of medieval altarpieces.

In Occupy White Walls you can also visit the Museum of Maricel (Sea and Sky), which was originally the home of the American millionaire, Charles Deering, who had an impressive art collection and bought an entire barrio, a city neighbourhood, to exhibit its collections. There too, in the game, there are numerous works that tempt you to go and see the real museum, from Gothic altarpieces to Rusiñol's paintings. Another remarkable room is dedicated to the allegories of the First World War by José Maria Sert, the painter who created the decoration of the United Nations Palace in Geneva.

“In the game, we tried to keep the same tour routes as in the real world museums. At Cau Ferrat in the physical museum, there were explanatory cards, which we had to remove with the Covid emergency. Thus, visitors to the real museum can visit the rooms with a smartphone app that describes the various paintings. That same app can also be used for visiting OWW. In the virtual part of Maricel, on the other hand, there are signs with brief explanations. In the future, in the game, it would be great to do guided tours with avatars. Explanations of the works disseminated by the speakers present in the halls could also be envisaged (Sound cloud music/audio integration was added to KULTURA/OWW in a recent update)”.

All this is a work in progress. "We are also working on the Romantic Museum, which will soon reopen in the real world, and the Stämpfli Foundation for Contemporary Art. In the latter case, however, there is a problem of rights ", notes Pere Izquierdo.

There are other initiatives. "On the 22nd of June, we will be holding a competition in which OWW players will be invited to curate exhibitions on any subject they choose as long as they include at least 15 artworks from the Sitges collection. The prizes will include a museum catalogue, a reproduction of an artwork, and lots of ‘cubes’ – the (free) currency players use to build their own OWW galleries.

“I think this game offers endless opportunities of this kind, this is how art and museums will look in the 21st century".

“Since the parallel version of the Sitges museums opened, many people have commented on the virtual’s museum’s reception desk, saying they want to go and see the real museum,” notes Pere Izquierdo with satisfaction. "For us it means having hit the target. I am in love with KULTURA/OWW. We took a professional tool and turned it into a game, into something that can be fun for people. And it's wonderful that people can play at what we usually do as work ”.

To explore the parallel Sitges museum, download/stream the game, once logged in press T for the teleport menu and click on Sitges in the featured gallery list.
Alternatively, you can explore the collection through Sitges on KULTURA.

May 29, 2021

Multiplayer Free Skate Open Beta - Minor Update

Skater XL - The Ultimate Skateboarding Game - jeff.goforth

What is up guys? Over the last few weeks of the Multiplayer Free Skate Open Beta on PC we have been tracking usage, speaking to players and investigating a few key things hindering the fun of the experience and have made the following adjustments to the Open Beta Branch on Steam. We will be testing these changes over the next couple weeks, while we simultaneously continue to prepare the console Multiplayer Free Skate releases.

If you are already in the Open Beta Branch on Steam, these updates should download immediately upon opening the game. If the branch does not update automatically, close your Steam client completely and reopen it.

If you have not accessed the Open Beta Branch, follow the steps at the bottom of this post.

Pin Markers

We have found that it's sometimes hard to find where the action is or where other skaters are sessioning, particularly in big maps. Pin mode will now put an easy to spot colored marker above any skater's head, regardless of if they are in pin mode themselves making it far easier to find other skaters across a map. The markers extend into the sky to help find other skaters over, or from outside of buildings.

Public Multiplayer

Often you will be playing in a public game and want to play on a different map. The current experience forces you to join, leave, join, leave and hope that you load into a new map, also triggering repeated notifications on other players screens.

With the new system you can now push yourself straight to the next available room with the ‘Join Next Map' option, removing the problem of joining/rejoining in the hope of finding a new map. Map variation has been prioritized. If a room is full, the next room created will be different to the first one. In the current state of the game, this should produce more variation in which maps are up and running.

There is now also ability for you to invite a friend to join public rooms in addition to private rooms via the ‘Join specific room’ option. Like going to a skate park or spot in real life it’s a great way to hang out with your friend while also skating with a full room of other skaters.

Some insights into the new room logic (It’s a little complex, but perhaps interesting to see how the flow works..)

Exiting the game

We realize the escape button has worked until now in an unusual way, closing the game immediately when pushed. Pushing escape on the keyboard now takes you to the menu system and there is an added ‘Exit Game’ option to choose within this menu. A tiny QOL change to mention here, but we realize this has been frustrating enough for some players that a mod with 12k downloads was even created to amend it (shout out to M4cs and TrizlyBear). This change brings SXL in line with almost every other game ever made!!

Bug fixes

Significant across the board performance Improvements
Replay jitter fixed
Replay clip cutting bug fixed
Other players no longer disappear when leaving a room whilst filming / watching a replay
Other players are now hidden (if not in liveView) when joining a room whilst filming / watching a replay
Infinite loading for Replay, Maps and Character Menus fixed

Gear Update

Added new New Balance and éS shoes for Tiago Lemos, Brandon Westgate and Tom Asta pro characters as well as Male/Female Standard options.

Thank you so much for your valuable feedback and suggestions on the Multiplayer Free Skate Open Beta. Please keep it coming!

To open the beta, follow these steps:

Right click ‘Skater XL’ and open Properties

Select the ‘beta - Open Beta’ branch.

Steam should start downloading this version of the game. Once it has finished, you will be able to try the update. The game name in your library should now show “Skater XL [beta]”.
If you’d like to switch back to the regular commercial release branch of the game in future simply come back to this screen and select “NONE - opt out of all betas” in the drop down.

May 29, 2021

Co-op beat'em up in Braveland universe

Knights of Braveland - Ragnar

Hi, Bravelanders.

Here is some news from Tortuga Team. This time, instead of making a dynamic strategy, we decided to create an energetic Beat'em Up or Hack and Slash game. But not only that - we adding a "roguelike" part to it. But first things first.

After developing of The Spaceland - a turn-based strategy adventure game, we were itching for making something spicey, and we started to play around with some crazy ideas. Like, why not mix Golden Axe/Castle Crashers with something like Hand of Fate? Or, to say it in English - why not try to create a fantasy fighting game with generating campaign? sounds intriguing, right? Well, we too want to see how that will turn out. Especially when developing is already passed one year milestone and our game is beginning to take shape.

Once you choose a villain to hunt, you find yourself in a generated adventure. That part is classic. We see a potential prize that we obtain once we move to the next point. But here we can expect either positive or negative outcome from a random events pool.

Picking various story outcomes we can get completely unexpected resutls and even unlock new events. In this way we are able to expand our events pool with unique illustrated mini-stories.

Combat system is a reminiscent of Castle Crashers and Golden Axe, but focusing more on a classic Braveland enemies, where each of them has its own unique behaviour. As you discovering new Braveland places, more and more tricky enemies will be meet along the way. Some of them are ready to surprise you and even have an ace up their sleeve. For example, why not implement a sand shark? A man can dream :)

But, of course, the most important part is boss fights. They are a cause we go to so called "raids" (generated adventures). Our goal is to collect a unique set of equipment which will help us to overcome a villain in a tense fight. This way we progressing through a story and open access to a new, more malicious villain. But to get to the next boss, we will need to overcome even more dangerous fights with his minions.

On the whole - classic. Except one "but"... We don't have that much of cooperative roguelike games with generated campaign. So we expect better and working hard to create an outstanding fantasy adventure expierience.

Add our game in wishlist and follow, to stay tuned:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1253610/Braveland_Knights/