The more test cases, the better:

---

I've finished the second round of level design and I don't think there will be a third round.
A few levels might be tweaked but everything looks fine at the moment.

The game will introduce three more keywords (2 in chapter 3 and 1 in chapter 4), and consist of 45 levels.

To-do list:
1. Edge case test We decided to test every possible test case instead.
2. English translation for chapter 3 and later Done.
3. Minimal challenge for chapter 3 and later. It's almost done. Some of them can still be improved.
4. A story about how A=B and Pangu Project is created
5. User manual (pdf), and user manual for Pangu Project
6. Hotkeys and mouse wheel support
7. Achievements
8. Steam workshop
9. Sound effect (Don't expect more sound effects than Understand)
10. Minor UI tweak

The game will enter early access after step 7.
In late October or early November, I hope so.

Early access should last for a month if everything goes well.

---
And, the future:
Understand will get an update after A=B's full release.
I have a few ideas for a new chapter, but I'm not sure if it would work.
At least there will be an update for extra save slots.

Depending on if Pangu Project is well received, our next game will be a dice game or a puzzle game.

---
Fun fact:
A=B is Artless Games' first game with save slots, and some kind of artwork (background for the minigame).
It takes five years to make this happen.

---
Edit:
I just come up with a new idea.

There will be the third round of development.
Everything in the schedule might be delayed for a month. (maybe less)

• Fixed a bug in which an error appeared in the messenger.

Meowllo! It’s now pumpkin season. Which means you should go pick up a Trick or Trick Nobu Jr. sticker from the store. You can give this fat baby pumpkin boy a new home. Sparkly!



Anyways, that aside, we have been working on some detail-oriented things in September. Stuff that you won’t really notice in the game, but if we didn’t do it, you would definitely notice. My favorite kind of work to do 😥

So, one of our pain points in the past has been the absolute chonker that the Grassy Plains (and to an extent, all the other maps) has been in terms of resources to load. Well, it’s the Plains, right? So there’s a lot of grass, and flowers. And you can collect petals from the flowers, so they need collision. And you can chop the trees, so they need-

You see where I’m going with this, right?



Anyways, this absolute chonker took about 28 seconds(!!!) to load on our computers, and it would just straight up crash the Nintendo Switch.

So we had to fix it. And fix it we did! With a combination of ✨magic✨ and 🥴headaches🥴 we have solved our conundrum.


A no brainer, right? Less data to load, the speedier it becomes! Except we didn’t want to make the Plains completely bald. Instead of just wiping all the flowers and grass off the face of Snacko Island, we swapped out the foliage in places you couldn’t reach with instanced static meshes. They’re like shadow clones of things, so they don’t take up a lot of resources.



This alone reduced the load time of the Grassy Plains from 28 seconds on PC to about 13. So much better, but still not good.


The thing that was taking the longest was the first load of a level. Once the code generated the data for the foliage objects, it would go much quicker. So, why not do that process before the game turns into an executable? That’s what we did!



Recursive made this handy Resource Bakery (sounds delicious, but there’s no bread involved, sadly). Every time foliage would be changed in a level, you’d just have to bake in the information. The data tied to each tree and flower then gets rolled up along with the rest of the game. Essentially, it’s almost like we’re pre-loading the game before it gets installed on your system.

This has reduced the total load time of the Grassy Plains to a snappy 3 seconds on our computers, and 6-7 seconds on the Switch!! Congratulations 🎉

Now that we can vomit more foliage everywhere, I’ve taken the liberty to fill up the horizon with more trees and bushes in the farm, and added vistas to the town so you get a sneak peek of the Mushroom Forest and Grassy Plains.



I mean, since you’re walking there from the town, it makes sense to be able to see it, right?



All that optimizing aside, we’ve also been working on other things, like fixing our tutorials to include instructions for controllers, fixing inventory UI bugs because…of controllers. And adding controller support. We’re starting to hate controllers, just a bit. No one said it was going to be this hard?

Before I bore you with more…stuff. Here’s something we’ve been working on recently: multiple dye slot support for objects! It gives us the ability to define dye slots and parts on an asset, and apply a separate color for that part. You can have a circus barn set up with clown colors.



With adding Switch to release, it has made our work to-do list very fat. But it’s OK! Just knowing it isn’t crashing every other minute on the console is giving me a lot of happiness. We can’t wait for you to play Snacko! But first, finish the game…

Build robots from a wide variety of components.
Plan a strategy to carry you to victory.
Fight as a pilot alongside your bots in exciting PvP matches.
Test your mettle in the single player Entropy Tribunals!

Decoherence is finally coming to Steam!
✨✨✨Wishlist us!✨✨✨
💸🎮 FREE DEMO AVAILABLE NOW. 🎮💸

https://store.steampowered.com/app/561660/Decoherence/

2021/10/05 - Changelog

→ Added a display of current level number and section name in the campaign.
→ Corrected a bug with the AI not exploring all the level states containing Catchers (tile exclusive to the Editor).
→ Corrected a bug with Undo in the Editor where you could go back to previous levels and put the game in an illegal state.
→ Corrected a minor bug with the search field in the Editor receiving input while playing the level.

We've just pushed an update that allows the game to be played natively on Linux. Thanks to community members evilny0 and c-kolb for raising and helping to fix the issue.

We're also aware of a rare bug where input doesn't work upon starting the game. We're still investigating, but in the meantime, please try restarting the game and see if it fixes the problem. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

Hope you're enjoying the game! Please let us know your thoughts either by leaving us a review or posting on the forums. :)

Much Love,
Samurai Punk <3

Developer playing his own Speedrun platformer and trying to beat records...

Cairn: Mathair's Curse is a Scottish JRPG where one boy and his friends become entangled in an ancient conspiracy which threatens everything they know. Fight whacky enemies and meet unusual allies in this offbeat JRPG.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Weekly Dev Log for October 4th, 2021, detailing all the changes that have happened since September 27th, 2021. Note: Devs that don't appear in the weekly log are not necessarily away or not doing work, but may be working on things currently not announced or backend work that doesn't need to be detailed.

Thank you again to everyone who participated in our survey. We had a whopping 6,700+ responses!

You can view the results of this survey here.

As we've done in the past, the theme for October's contest is Halloween!

Feel free to interpret that how you like, whether that means making a haunted forest maze, a creepy basement, a chill Halloween party, or anything else, so long as it follows the rules and reasonably suits the theme.

The contest ends on October 27th, 2021, at 11:59 PM CT.

View the contest rules here!

We've created a forum post asking the community for suggestions on how we can improve gameplay for players with certain conditions such as colorblindness, dyslexia, or anything else that might affect a players ability to use the standard presentation and controls of the game.

If you have any ideas or suggestions, and possible solutions on how to solve a particular issue, please check out the forum post here.

Work begins on the next update, which is slated to include the return of the Halloween events and new Halloween items.

You can read everything planned for this update here.

JJosh has been working on new items for the Halloween events.













Last week, we released Update 0.14.4.1, which included some bug fixes and new condo materials.

You can read the full changelog here.

Sketchman has been working on improvements to the Gizmos for condos. This week he worked on updating the controls so the Gizmo can be dragged (or let go of) over existing UI elements.
The build UI will also now lock while the Gizmo is being dragged to prevent accidental inputs.




Johanna continued working on the shooting gallery ride, focusing on the spooky mansion area.









Lifeless continued working on the new Little Crusaders map.

madmijk continued working on the Arcade shooting gallery (not the ride). He also continued working on adding MIDI support.

macdguy released Update 0.14.4.1 and started working on coding the shooting gallery ride.

Wheezwer continued working on haunted paintings for the shooting gallery ride.

Will continued working on music for both shooting gallerys.
That about covers everything that happened since September 27th, 2021 at PixelTail Games.

---

Join our Discord for development updates and community fun!
https://discord.gg/pixeltail
We love awesome people like you!

We're also active on Twitter!
https://twitter.com/PixelTailGames

Follow our developments on our Trello in near real-time:
https://trello.com/b/6BwRMiPw/tower-unite-roadmap

Take a peek at what's being worked on every week in our weekly dev logs! There's bound to be something interesting every week!
https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/devupdates/weekly-dev-logs

Please report bugs & submit suggestions on our forums. We're active everyday & here to help.
For bug reports: https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/bug-report/18
For suggestions: https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/c/suggestions/7

<3 PixelTail Games

Explanation video. I highly recommend you watch!


This is our first "major" update - the Catrio Update. This was a combined patch with our September bug fixes.



Catrio mode is really our first pass in adding a custom skin swapping system. Once you enter "Catrio" mode, everything gets re-skinned to a cat theme.



Q: "Does it change gameplay in any way?"
A: No.

Q: "Was it worth spending a month of dev time?"
A: No.

Q: "Was this just an excuse to start fake internet beef with Twitch Streamer Atrioc and make a vlog out of it?"
A: Yes.

Q: "Was it also because having a custom skin system is essential to the story, and you had always planned on doing it, making this a next level, big brain, genius strategy level move?
A: No.



1. Enter the Konami code at title screen
2. Once done, you'll a custom skin set will be applied to your next game.
3. Hop into a game and enjoy catrio mode.
Note, this doesn't change any save files, you just play game normally. You'll have to apply Catrio Mode every time you run Atrio.

• The Player Death Respawn now displays the employee number properly
  
• If the player dies in the dark, a torch is dropped when they are respawned
  
• Fixed backpack-size upgrade 1 - Sometimes it would update the size incorrectly
  
• Saveslot now only shows minutes and seconds (instead of 6 decimal places)
  
• SapTap now does an overlap check when being placed
  
• Fixed an issue where pushbacks teleported through walls
  
• Player no longer flickers when plugged into punk monk

1. The creature that pulls from chests....... isn't coming. Yet. We'll be doing the basic version of that first, a scrap-chest that automatically dispenses out to a grav-pipe. once that's done, we'll start exploring the creature.


2. The picker pal

A hand that automatically harvests items off the ground. I don't want to spoil too much (and we want to cover our butts incase we build them and find out they arent fun...) so that's all you get.


This upcoming patch will have considerably larger changes to the game than this patch. Expect some awesome changes in the future, but also expect a longer turn around time until the next patch.


Stephen, Isto Inc.