Notes:
--Performance improvements
--Collision fixes
--Material optimizations
--New AI type "Cowboy Bandit"
--New Sandbox Map "Saloon"
--Modified Tutorial Arcade to stop playing once you walk away "pauses" and resets after 10 seconds
--Updated lobby map "performance tweaks"

Our Discord

Sincerely
~Jason & Tim~
~WildOx Studios~

Many people haven't heard anything from us in a while - I'm sorry, developing the update took much longer than I expected.

The Isolated Year Update - that we've decided to call Director's cut for simplicity and marketing purpose (everyone knows what Director's cut is) - is coming out tomorrow, 12.09.2021.



I'll publish a full list of updated things tomorrow, but right now I may give you a shorter one: half of the game remade, achievements changed, endings changed (maybe it will be a disappointing change for someone), the storyline makes more sense and closer to the original idea even though you may not think so from the first time you play, 2 BOSSFIGHTS in a walking sim with actual challenging gameplay holy crap; better settings, level selection (no new game for achievement farming), controller support, Mac and Linux versions, a sexy intro with our company logo and an OST release.

Everything is for free (well, not OST) and included as a part of the base game, as I hate DLC's. Though if you want to support us you may purchase the OST, it also releases tomorrow.

Oh yeah, if you liked the old labyrinth level it's your last day to enjoy it.

P.S. I'm sorry for folks who lost their achievements without any warning from our side - I was sure the achievement update is not public yet, as I haven't pressed "Publish" button for it in Steam developer dashboard.

Also, I'm sorry for many questions being unanswered in discussions. I always thought I should get a notification if there are new discussions, and thought there are none - obviously, I was wrong.

Follow us on Twitter if you want to see more unexpected name changes for free updates https://twitter.com/sowokegames

-Change: Hotkeys file format altered.
Don't bother loading old hotkey file.
If necessary delete gklist.dat file.
-Fix: Radar drawing work better. Still WIP.
-Change: You can now move around with the Radar open.

SERVER

• Fixed a crash

The SKULL CHAINZ Playtest is now live! You can request for access directly from the Store page.

Beware: this game is still kinda jank, but now that the tools and base are mostly done, I thought I should get more feedback on it while generating the content!

Controls:
Left click to hold the skull and swing, not hitting enemies builds up charge
Right click to throw the skull and retrieve it
R to Restart manually

And that's it! Once you beat the boss the demo is done. As I said, it's still really rough, but I hope you guys have fun with it - and don't forget to leave me some feedback so I can improve it!

If you haven't, join our Discord today! https://discord.gg/kRBprXvDrX

Hi everyone,
This week, we worked on a new overworld incident to utilize the explosive barrels. When travelling at the overworld, our hero notices a suspicious man carrying supplies to a cave entrance. This is actually a hidden loot stash of a thug leader. Hero can choose to investigate the cave. There is a wooden chest and at least one copper chest inside, along with the bandits. There are also lots of explosive barrels to make the fight all the more interesting.



We also worked on the arctic barrels. As mentioned last week, they freeze the adjacent squares when exploded. We put those to the lost mausoleum incident at the overworld. They seem to fit there thematically along with the cold hearted phantoms and skeletons.



We also tested the barrels in the dungeons to make sure they don’t come up too many or too few. Now it's time to work on poison barrels to bring some less than chivalrous tactics to the table. Thanks for reading.

May the tides bring you triumph!

Hey all,

here is another update. This time I focused on improving formation movement.

In this gif, you can see that formations do not slow down, even though they walking in a curved and narrow corridor. The overall formation speed is a lot more stable and, the movement is a lot smoother.



When big formations got called back, this was often a mess in terms of movement and how much time they needed to adjust. This now works a lot smoother as well as you can see in the gif below.



I did not actually plan to improve the performance with this patch, but I realized that "The Battle of Mount Dinheim" map was really slow at some point and looked into it.

I found out that some decals, as well as some particle effects, did not use instance rendering correctly. This way I was able to reduce the number of max draw calls from around 1800 down to 600.

The fix, which took only a few minutes improved the performance on my computer from around 45fps to about 90fps on the Mt. Dinheim map.

This was quite unexpected and should improve the overall performance especially for older systems with dated hardware.

I also fixed a silly bug, which happened when a mission has been restarted from the pause menu. It would change the difficulty to "normal" instead of the selected one. It was probably quite frustrating for people not used to RTS games at all. Sorry for that :/.

So here is the full list of changes.

• Improved how squad formations are recalled and fleeing.
  
• Formation moves a lot smoother now as they are not slowing down so much when single squads are not at the position they should be.
  
• Squads that are stationed in a base do not attack buildings from other bases anymore. This would lead to really frustrating gameplay moments especially on the "Battle of Mount Dinheim" mission.
  
• Some major performance improvements on decals
  
• Overall improved how squad speed is calculated as it sometimes did not work when they spawned during a fight.
  
• Some smaller optimizations, which reduces the CPU load but especially on the GPU load.
  
• Added the option to build guardhouses in the "The Battle of Mount Dinheim" map.
  
• Increased some quest reward in "The Battle of Mount Dinheim" map.

• Fixed a bug for the wizard -> When the wizard would not be available from the start and spawned in the first time via a call spell, projectile spells would not work correctly, most of the time.
  
• Fixed a bug when restarting missions -> The mission would start with a "normal" difficulty instead of the chosen difficulty.

Thanks for playing and giving feedback! :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1368160/Heart_Of_Muriet/

Hey all,

here is another update. This time I focused on improving formation movement.

In this gif, you can see that formations do not slow down, even though they walking in a curved and narrow corridor. The overall formation speed is a lot more stable and, the movement is a lot smoother.



When big formations got called back, this was often a mess in terms of movement and how much time they needed to adjust. This now works a lot smoother as well as you can see in the gif below.



I did not actually plan to improve the performance with this patch, but I realized that "The Battle of Mount Dinheim" map was really slow at some point and looked into it.

I found out that some decals, as well as some particle effects, did not use instance rendering correctly. This way I was able to reduce the number of max draw calls from around 1800 down to 600.

The fix, which took only a few minutes improved the performance on my computer from around 45fps to about 90fps on the Mt. Dinheim map.

This was quite unexpected and should improve the overall performance especially for older systems with dated hardware.

I also fixed a silly bug, which happened when a mission has been restarted from the pause menu. It would change the difficulty to "normal" instead of the selected one. It was probably quite frustrating for people not used to RTS games at all. Sorry for that :/.

So here is the full list of changes.

• Improved how squad formations are recalled and fleeing.
  
• Formation moves a lot smoother now as they are not slowing down so much when single squads are not at the position they should be.
  
• Squads that are stationed in a base do not attack buildings from other bases anymore. This would lead to really frustrating gameplay moments especially on the "Battle of Mount Dinheim" mission.
  
• Some major performance improvements on decals
  
• Overall improved how squad speed is calculated as it sometimes did not work when they spawned during a fight.
  
• Some smaller optimizations, which reduces the CPU load but especially on the GPU load.
  
• Added the option to build guardhouses in the "The Battle of Mount Dinheim" map.
  
• Increased some quest reward in "The Battle of Mount Dinheim" map.

• Fixed a bug for the wizard -> When the wizard would not be available from the start and spawned in the first time via a call spell, projectile spells would not work correctly, most of the time.
  
• Fixed a bug when restarting missions -> The mission would start with a "normal" difficulty instead of the chosen difficulty.

Thanks for playing and giving great feedback! :)


https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1368160/view/2968424218815206261

Greetings friends!

We are happy to confirm that the development of "Diplomacy is Not an Option" demo is in full swing and surprisingly on schedule. And you'll be able to get your hands on the demo during Steam Next Fest in early October.

However, there is another news worth mentioning related to October...

Improvements on various game systems (fog of war, dialogs, sleeping guards, guards vision).


Changes to which unexplored parts of the maps are shown behind a fog. The new system only reveals the next couple of unexplored tiles instead of the whole map layout. The main goals of the new system are:

• Easily find out where there's more to explore
  
• Don't give too much info about what's not explored yet (layout, secrets, etc.)
  
• Look better

Make waking guards more visible, and let the player have a chance to react before they're awake.

• Instead of waking up instantly, sleeping guards will now always take one turn to wake up.
  
• An alert is displayed on the screen when a guard is about to wake up.

• Added a button to skip a dialog entirely.
  
• Dialogs always wait for player input before going to the following line.
  
• Added safety to avoid skipping a dialog line by mistake.
  
• Better looking buttons!

• Tweaked guards' vision to make it more intuitive and consistent.
  
• Improved appearance for rugs
  
• Improved appearance for alarms. They also play a visual effect when triggered by the player
  
• Minor changes in levels (misplaced walls, etc.)

• Tooltips were too big to fit on the screen on some resolutions

• Rarely, the game freeze for a couple of seconds on a specific action (for example, destroying a wall).