Oct 29, 2021

PHAGEBORN: Online Card Game - Games Revolted

Dear Phageborn community!

In our last few posts, we presented some major changes we made to the game, specifically our transition from 2D to 3D and accompanying quality of life improvements. So today we want to give you a little insight into the reasons behind it, address the most asked question, and talk to you about the direction in which we want to go with certain elements.

What made us decide to go 3D instead of 2D?

Our motivation is to give you the most immersive experience possible. The first step towards it was to make animated battlegrounds so we can bring life to the surroundings. We decided that the best way to do that is to go 3D. That also allowed us to give you guys better VFX and a spatial audio system that we were unable to do before. With new improvements, Avatars didn’t feel like they fit in. As most of you who have played the game before know, Avatars are playable characters with special skills which can change the way you play the game. They used to be in 2D and were displayed by portraits, and in this new 3D world their appearance didn’t adequately represent their importance. So we also made Avatars in 3D. That allowed us to make them customizable via various skins so that you can personalize them to embody you and your playstyle better.

Why are the old version's (Steam version) servers down?

We have put so much time and effort into improving the general experience of the game but we are still not finished. There is more work to be done in improving and optimizing the game so that it can be really enjoyable for our players. So it seems wise to keep them offline until we can implement all upgrades and missing elements. That should give the existing player base and the new players a fresh experience when playing our game. There was a comparison from our Issilith residents on how the changes implemented so far made Phageborn more like a Phageborn 2. We were very happy to hear that!

One of the things we would like to hear your feedback on is a question regarding our Menu screen. We would also like to make improvements by creating a live 3D menu so that players can feel as if they are really in the world of Issilith even while they are not playing the game.

Our current menu:

New 3D menu:*

*The picture shown is not actual in-game material and may change in the future. Highlighted objects are examples of submenus in the Guild screen.

What is your opinion on 2D vs 3D menu screens? Which one do you prefer?
Comment below or join our Discord channel to discuss it with other Issilith residents: Discord.

Yours truly,
Games Revolted Team

Oct 29, 2021

Lords and Villeins Content Update #1 is Here!

Lords and Villeins - 1C_David

That's right! New major update 0.12.17 has arrived and brings many new features for you to enjoy! From the traveling salesmen, the Inn and travelers visiting, to hunting, new weather effects, temperature simulation, fighting and more. You can even look forward to some spooky additions - plant pumpkins on your farms and place Jack-o-Lanterns 🎃 to make your village more mysterious!👻

This update marks the first major milestone in our Roadmap. The main goal for us here was to bring more life into the settlement and make the world more dynamic. We also took many of your suggestions on board and added many improvements, quality of life features and actively hunted down all the bugs you have been reporting so big thank you to everyone who contributed.

If you want to share your thoughts with us, you can visit the Steam forums or join our Discord community, where we sometimes also recruit new players to our closed beta, so by joining you may get early access to new builds!

With the world update delivered, we will now focus on a small hotfix patch in the following days in case something critical would come up, but otherwise we are well on our way for the update #2 - The Nobility and Clergy, which will add a new social classes and spiritual needs to your villagers.

Developer Livestream

In the meantime, you can join us on our Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/honestlygamesstudio for another developer livestream, where we will celebrate the release together! Schedule your time for this Sunday 31st at 8PM CEST!

Finally, here is a new trailer showcasing the new features as well as detailed changelog for you to explore!

New Features

New Zone: The Inn
- Place bars, tables chairs, beds, and cooking facilities to run the inn.
- Assign the Inn to any family in the settlement to run it. It can also serve as their home!
- Villagers will regularly visit the Inn to have a beer and socialize with others.
- Villagers will purchase meals or beds at the inn if they don't have their own.
- Visitors will arrive at the village and spend some time at the inn. Then depending on the reputation of the player may request to stay (replaces the current system of random popups).
New Zone: Caravan Marketplace
- Build caravan storages and storefronts to attract traveling salesmen.
- Caravans react to the demand of the settlement and a portion of their offering is tailored to the needs of the specific settlement, while the rest is random.
- Villagers purchase from caravans in the same way as from other villagers, though they prioritize local markets first.
- Caravans attempt to purchase cheap resources on the local markets, that are oversupplied, thus creating an opportunity for import and export economies.
New Zone: Hunting Area
- Attract new families of hunters and assign them the hunting area.
- Place hideouts, forest feeders, and traps to hunt wild animals.
- Forest feeders attract wild animals and hideouts provide protection.
- Hunters will use bows and crossbows to hunt and prefer equipping leather armor for better protection.
New Wild Animals and Herd Behavior
- Bear, boar, deer, and wolf have been added.
- Animals now spawn regularly in herds and move through the map in search of food.
- Carnivores like bears, boars, and wolves will hunt other animals for food. They may even attack villagers if they get desperate!
- Wolves sometimes perform tactical hunting and find a target to hunt down during the night when all animals are sleeping.
- Animals rotate out of the map and have preferred seasons outside of which they won't appear on the map.
Domesticated animals now come in with caravans
- Cows, chickens, and sheep no longer spawn on the map. Instead, villagers will purchase them from traveling salesmen.
- Pigs currently still appear on the map to make foragers viable. Once we implement better breeding AI, we will remove them as well.
New Pets - Cats and Dogs
- Villagers have now a small chance to appear with a pet - a cat or dog.
- Pets will follow their owners around and can protect them in a fight.
Added new stats for strength, dexterity, and intelligence
- Both villagers and animals now have stats - strength that dictates their attack power and health, a dexterity that dictates their defense, and attack speed and intelligence, which impacts their social interactions (only applies for villagers).
Added new fighting system
- Villagers and animals can now fight each other.
- The system is driven by villager stats and equipment.
- Villagers and animals will protect each other in a fight depending on the situation and distance from the fight.
- Most fights between villagers end with fainting. Fainted villagers are dragged to the bed by their family relatives to recover.
Villagers can wear equipment and tools
- Each piece of equipment has a durability loss which is accumulated either naturally through time, for most wearable equipment, or when used.
- When villagers wear tools, the time of work-related activities is reduced.
The game tracks the reputation of the player
- Reputation is updated daily based on relationships with other families.
- The relationship is driven by the actions of the player and villagers' average happiness, which is most impacted by their average mood.
Villagers build relationships, date, and request to marry
- They greet each other in proximity or when sitting at the same table, progressing their relationship either in a positive or negative direction (indicated by emojis over their head).
- Some villagers will have special interests in each other and if relationships increase well enough, they will fall in love.
- Villagers that are in love can go on a date from time to time and have a chance to request permission to marry.
- If a relationship is very negative, villagers have a chance to enter a fight after a negative interaction.
Individual families maintain relationships with each other
- The family relationship is updated daily and it translates into personal interactions of villagers. This information is currently hidden from the player but it drives the relationship system.
Temperature is simulated
- Simulation is driven by a global temperature that changes through the year and is impacted by insolation (walls, rooftops) and heat sources (fireplace, candles).
- A new heatmap overlay has been added to observe the temperature on the map.
- Villagers need to keep themselves warm. During cold days, they will burn firewood in fireplaces and actively surround them to heat up.
- Clothes now impact their resistance to cold temperatures and naked villagers will freeze more easily.
New weather effects
- Weather effects of rain, storm, and snow are randomly triggered depending on the season.
Walls and structures deteriorate over time
- Visual indication marks their reduced quality and villagers will perform activities to repair them. Currently, there is no cost to repairing them, but this will be added later.
- Public structures are maintained by the ruling family.
Beauty values are simulated
- Values are driven by terrain type, structures, and walls and their quality and cost. Better / more expensive structures provide more beauty. Trash piles on the ground also decrease beauty.
- Peasant villagers are not very demanding in terms of beauty, but the noble class added in the next update will act differently.
- A new beauty overlay has been added to observe the beauty levels on the map.
Soil quality is simulated
- The quality is impacted by terrain type, distance to the source of water, and the presence of crops, plants, and trees. Soil regenerates over time if it is not used and rain speeds up regeneration.
- Soil quality impacts the speed of growth of plants and their chance of getting sick before harvesting.
- Players can maintain the percentage of soil being left to regenerate in the priority menu of the farm.
- A new soil quality overlay has been added to observe the quality of the soil on the map.
New Market Price List UI
- A new screen that lists current prices of all goods and animals, as well as their change from a previous day.

Other Improvements

When villagers eat at a table, there is a visual indication of the meal on the table.
The tutorial scenario has been expanded with new quests that teach the new game mechanics like heat, marketplace, and the inn.
The tutorial book has been expanded with information about new features, such as caravans and the inn.
The sound system has been improved, making the sound levels more balanced and adding better transitions.
The in-game HUD has been redesigned. It now contains a middle section for action buttons and a right bottom section for toggling overlays.
Most UI screens have been redesigned, particularly to display fonts bigger and make them easier to read.
Homosexual couples can now adopt children.
Art for existing animals has been updated.
Added Grass Field floor type that can be used to cover the dirt.
When setting fees or salary on a zone, players now can enter the value as gold, silver, and copper coins separately.
The ruling family will now build structures covered by a zone if that zone has no family assigned.
An option to force villagers to ignore building blueprints in a zone has been added.
The cursor tooltip now also shows the size of the placed zones.
Increased priority of building over planting and harvesting.
The inventory screen now lists also personal gold of villagers and separately lists taxed resources in the ownership of a zone/family/person.
When a family starts to run out of money, a "Family is Low on Money" notification is triggered.
Renamed Blacksmithery to Forge and Bowmaker to Bowyer.
Zone tooltips now list a recommended build size as a guiding point for new players.
Different walking speeds on varying terrain - villagers now walk faster on cobblestone paths and slower in forest or sand.
Cats and dogs can be pet by clicking on them.
Accept New Family UI now shows which animals they would arrive with. It also lists zones they can be assigned to with their profession.
Families in the tutorial should now cook meals regardless of their stock to complete the quest faster even if the player donated them a lot of food.
The tutorial now starts with a bigger fishing family to make building the Inn easier.
Added new "Clear All Notifications" button.
Storefronts now also list ground resources being sold.

Bugfixes

Fixed bug that caused the "Married in" mark in the family book to appear incorrectly.
Fixed incorrect meat yields from animals when butchered.
Fixed bug that sorted items in the Royal Tax screen incorrectly.
Fixed bug that displayed incorrect text for the king when the player completed all taxes fully.
Fixed bugs with the cursor tooltip displaying size dimensions and costs.
Fixed bug where built chairs appear under the floor blueprint.
Fixed bug where you can't close inventory screen with a cross button.
Fixed bug that Ground Storage did not list all resources if by chance villagers stored multiple types there.

Oct 29, 2021

Halloween in War Thunder!

War Thunder - pryanick

What could be spookier than rushing through a survival race alongside the laughter of evil Halloween spirits? Participate in races in the sky and on the ground ahead of War Thunder's birthday! Check out the new grim hangar and earn yourself some spooky Twitch drops!

From 12:00 GMT on the 29th of October until 09:00 GMT on the 1st of November

Decals from the “Dead Man’s Chest”

Plague Doctor

Hatter

Ghost

Killer Pumpkin

The “Dead Man’s Chest” and “Witch’s Cauldron” trophies will be available for purchase in the in-game store to unlock all of the Halloween decals and decorations.

Ground event: “Armour race on a dark path”

This is the M18 “Witch” that will take you to the finish line much faster than the standard, less spooky modification. Achieve 300 rating points in races and get one of the creepy decals from the “Dead Man’s Chest”!

Aircraft event: “Witch Hunt”

A special race modification of the Po-2 “Night Witch”, that will take you swiftly to the finishing line. The only thing left to do is to show your talent for racing and not smash your aircraft on the rocks during sharp turns. Earn 300 rating points to get another unique decal from the “Dead Man’s Chest”. Your rating depends on the position in which you finished the race.

When the air races are over, the top 1,000 pilots will permanently receive the unique Po-2 biplane. The vehicles will be awarded during the 48 hour period after the Halloween event ends.

You can follow your progress by clicking on the “award button” in the “event” tab. But bear in mind, the record table can take up to 15 minutes to update.

Twitch Drops for Halloween!

Boo! What's Halloween without spooky decorations? On this eerily fun holiday, we have prepared decals and decorators for your vehicles that will surely terrify your enemies!

Watch War Thunder streams on Twitch that are marked with “Drops enabled!” from the 29th of October (15:00 GMT) until the 1st of November (09:00 GMT) to get unique Halloween prizes!

Spooky prizes in Twitch Drops:

“Witch snail” decal
“Snail killer” decal
“Scarecrow” decorator (for fleet)
“Witch’s Cauldron” Trophy (contains one of three decorators for ground vehicles): “Cannibal Axe”, “Chainsaw” and “Slasher’s Mask”

FAQ

Can I get something for War Thunder?
Yes! The more you watch War Thunder streams, the more rewards you’ll be able to earn!

Awesome! What do I need to do to have a chance of getting these rewards?
You just need to link your Gaijin and Twitch accounts:

Register or enter your Twitch account login details at the website.
Enter the login details for the Gaijin account you use to play War Thunder on this page, then click on the “Link” button.
Click the “Allow” button!

ATTENTION! Check the data of your accounts before linking them. Re-linking is possible a maximum of once every 5 days!

What streams do I need to watch to have a chance of earning rewards?
Watch War Thunder streams marked with “Drops enabled!”.

How can I find out if I have received a drop?

If you get a drop, you will see a message on the Twitch page for the stream in the upper right corner. After claiming your reward, you can find the items in your inventory in game.

ATTENTION! You need to click on the “Claim” button in the Twitch Drops Inventory before the end of the Twitch Drops campaign — until 09:00 GMT on the 1st of November! You will not be able to get any rewards afterwards!

What platforms are these rewards available for?

Rewards for War Thunder can be obtained on PC, Xbox and PlayStation.

[/list]
I’m a streamer and want to stream War Thunder. How can I enable Drops on my channel?

Link your Twitch account to your Gaijin account.
Switch on Drops in the Twitch settings.
Play War Thunder, stream on Twitch and make sure that you have selected War Thunder as the stream category on the stream settings page.