Hello there!

We have released a new update for the game, fixing many sound mixing and small gameplay issues. This update also includes visual enhancements, like revamping the Forsaken Forest environment and Thinker nest model.

After this update we will also be moving away from the Early Access program. We have now been in this stage for almost nine months. We already feel like the game is close enough to what we envisioned it to be in the beginning of the project.

Enemy Remains was envisioned to be an intense mix between the topdown shooter and survival horror genre, with local "couch coop" gameplay. We wanted to feature both story-oriented campaign and an endless horde survival mode. And that's what is already in the game!

We might still release some new content, like maps or smaller features, as further updates or DLC. However, we do not have any roadmap for creating or releasing any new DLC currently.

• New model and animations on the Thinker nest.
  
• Updated environment visuals in Forsaken Forest.
  
• New visuals on the spore traps.
  
• Skipping in-game intro cinematics now possible.
  
• Added player upgrades to Survival.
  
• Mangler demons now take some amount of fire damage from flamethrower instead of none.
  
• Curse staff also hurts through the demon shield.
  
• Fixed HUD not disappearing in loading after Slaughterfarm.
  
• Fixed barrels not being destroyed in Survival map.
  
• Fixed barrels in Corruption Plant and Plant Underground maps.
  
• Tentacles appearin In the Flesh map now have collisions.
  
• Weapon sound effects remixed and enhanced.
  
• Impact sound effects remixed.
  
• Computer collisions in Research Lab fixed.
  
• Sound reverb on the boss tesla weapons adjusted.
  
• End boss reverb and sound mixing adjusted.

Enjoy!

- Harri J.

20211107
One of a kind gamers! Some tasks take longer than others and the new menu revision is one of those. We do our best to make sure things are as bug-free as possible before we get it into your hands so it’s going to take a few more days to tidy up the new menu. How’s it lookin’? Glad you asked! Friggin’ awesome. Should really help pull the whole experience together and hopefully make people feel more connected to their little robot guy since he’ll be on their screen all the time now. We touched up a few other things earlier in the week before we took on the monster that is the menu so things should feel a little more refined across the board. Next week should be a great one, stay tuned!

Completed

• Cleanup
  
• Menu revision is looking good for implementation next week

Next

• Finisher: Snuggler, Safe
  
• Outfit: Fuggs, Capris
  
• Menu reimagined with bot preview and overall seamlessness
  
• Queuing in the background so you can still use the rest of the menu
  
• Single player score attack mode
  
• Screen pizzaz to help convey damage and Energy level

Thanks!
-Mac

Community and dev access
https://discord.gg/BRqw8Ka

RetroArch 1.9.13 has just been released.

If you'd like to learn more about upcoming releases, please consult our roadmap here.

Remember that this project exists for the benefit of our users, and that we wouldn't keep doing this were it not for spreading the love to our users. This project exists because of your support and belief in us to keep going doing great things. If you’d like to show your support, consider donating to us. Check here in order to learn more. In addition to being able to support us on Patreon, there is now also the option to sponsor us on Github Sponsors! You can also help us out by buying some of our merch on our Teespring store!


Project IO continues as we try to abstract all file I/O in libretro cores and RetroArch to meet the Google Play Store's new policies. Android 11/12 requires the use of the Storage Access Framework for file I/O, as libc stdio access is being restricted as much as possible.

One of the beneficial side effects of Project IO is that in going over each core, we find out all sorts of long standing issues along the way, and we try to improve the cores along the way. So it serves as a much needed quality control check as well.

Do not expect frequent updates to the Google Play Store version until further notice for now. This is because of the new Play Store requirements (as explained bove in the Project IO section). Basically what it comes down to is that despite our hardest work and effort, we have missed the deadline, and so any new APK that is pushed to Google Play is likely to be rejected until the minimum SDK Level (30) and SAF is being used. We are trying to work as fast as we can to get to that stage. A realistic target is possibly two weeks from now, but we'd rather not make promises and see how far we can get by that point. In the meantime, downloading it from our site (the non-Google Play Store version), the Amazon App Store, or Huawei AppGallery or all valid alternatives that should receive an update.


https://twitter.com/libretro/status/1457056214588788742

After introducing unique innovations like runahead in the past, RetroArch continues to innovate once more and remains at the forefront of latency reduction: introducing automatic frame delay! Read all about it in our separate article here.

The aim of this option is to lessen the burden of creating core-specific and also game-specific overrides for Frame Delay, and instead go for "set it and forget it". With 0 value, the starting point will be half frame time.

It is fairly simple and it is based on frame time averaging with a few different thresholds which filter out false positives and provide quick stabilization with bigger steps depending on the need.

It only goes down, it is temporary, and it will reset on core unload and on SET_SYSTEM_AV_INFO. The necessary values are shown in video statistics and all actions are logged in info level.

Some notes by the author:
* For Windows users - use the XAudio driver for now, WASAPI and DirectSound does not lead to reliable results with Auto Frame Delay for now.
* Early polling could behave better with frame delay. Try setting Polling Behavior from 'Late' to 'Early' and see if you prefer it that way. Note that that polling setting needs (restart) info with it, since it does not properly refresh in realtime. If it is anything but Late at startup, putting it to Late will be always one frame behind.

A much requested feature by WiiU users is back again! This allows all the connected gamepad devices to control the menu simultaneously. It is enabled by default for WiiU and disabled for all other devices.

NOTE: Only player 1 can toggle the menu. This is a limitation of the current input system. But any set Menu Toggle Controller Combo will work fine for all users, so it is probably acceptable for now.

Before, accessing the Explore menu would freeze the user interface for up to several seconds (depending on host hardware performance) while playlists and databases are scanned.

1.9.13 just pushes the Explore menu initialisation onto a background thread, so the UI remains responsive while the various processing occurs. (Note that the host platform must of course have threading support - if not, Explore menu initialisation will remain on the main thread)

Not important much to endusers but still worthy of a mention to people familiar with the codebase. Replaces the single long-running load task for RetroAchievements with several smaller tasks (which are threaded).

This also eliminates the coroutine code as that was only being used to yield the long-running load task - there wasn't actually anything else to be coroutine with.

Subtasks (i.e. 1a/1b) are queued together and can be executed in parallel. RetroArch's task system only has one task thread, but the HTTP task does sort of interleave the server requests so they are more-or-less executed at the same time.


As mentioned before, as part of Project IO, we are going over every core and performing some basic quality control checks. This already resulted in numerous Quality of Life enhancements to cores. Not all of the improvements listed below can be attributed to Project IO, but it's fair to estimate over 90% of them are.

Description: mGBA is a Game Boy Advance emulator


GBA content ran with the mGBA core was sometimes subject to crackling audio and intermittent bad frame pacing (particularly when using low frontend audio latency settings).

It turns out that the core was handling audio suboptimally in the libretro layer. At the set audio sample rate, the frontend expects between 548 and 549 audio samples per frame - but the AVStream audio callback reads and sends exactly 512 samples. This means that the audio callback becomes desynchronised with retro_run() - sometimes 512 samples will get sent to the frontend for the current frame, sometimes 1024 as the core either falls behind or overcompensates. As a result, when the frontend tries to synchronise on audio, jitter can occur - and if the frontend audio buffer is small (when using low latency values), it can sometimes run dry or reach capacity, causing crackling.

Our changes modifies audio handling in the libretro layer such that the correct expected number of samples is sent to the frontend in proper synchronisation with retro_run(). With this change we no longer experience cracking audio in GBA games, and the 240p test suit demonstrates smooth scrolling.

Note that the changes here only affect GBA content. GB/GBC emulation produces irregular audio sample pacing that is not consistent with the set sample rate, and so I am unsure how best to handle it. The existing AVStream audio callback and fixed buffer size of 512 is therefore maintained for GB/GBC content (since it already seems to produce acceptable results in most cases)


While working on the above, we noticed that the audio produced by this core is somewhat 'harsh' sounding. We have added an optional (fast) low pass audio filter (with associated strength setting), which softens the generated output to a more comfortable level.

Since we had to modify the core options, we also took this opportunity to update the options to v2 format, with category support.

Description: This is the mainline MAME core based on current sourcecode

We have updated the LRMAME core to version 0.237.


In addition, we are happy to report that a longstanding issue with this core has been resolved. There was previously 1 additional frame of input latency in this core. This has thankfully been shaved off now.

Description: This is a Game Boy Advance emulator




gpSP now has a dynamic recompiler for x86 x64 architecture processors! Now both 32bit and 64bit CPUs have a working dynamic recompiler.

This is now hands down the fastest Game Boy Advance emulator in existence on x86 x64 platforms, outside or inside of libretro/RetroArch. We have benchmarked it ourselves - on an i9 10900KF, we get a regular reading of 2270/2280 fps in fastforward mode with Super Mario Advance 2. This makes it even faster than QuickNES, an 8bit Nintendo Entertainment System emulator. It is a little bit slower than Gambatte (still one of the kings in terms of performant cores) at ~2300fps, but it bears reminding that Gambatte is only targeting 8bit Game Boy consoles as opposed to the 32bit Game Boy Advance.

With Advance Wars, we can get even crazier readings like anywhere from ~4000 to ~5000fps in windowed mode.

Suffice to say, this kind of performance before was simply unheard of for a GBA emulator. Suffice to say, if you were still hurting for performance with a Game Boy Advance emulator before (on whatever ghetto rig you have repurposed), give this a try!

Description: This is a Doom/Doom 2/Ultimate Doom/Final Doom game engine core.

In addition to this core now using the VFS for file I/O, we also improved the following listed below.


On recent versions of RetroArch the core options are currently falling back to v0 format (missing sublabels) due to a trivial 'supported version check' error in libretro_core_options.h. We fixed the issue.


We tried fixing every memory leak that we could find in the core.

It also works around a nasty bug in the code for saving/loading games, where an array index can easily go out of bounds.

Note that we had to stub a certain deinit out for the Windows build, the z_zone memory management seems to be pretty hairy on Windows and we unfortunately haven't found a clean way to fix that yet. However, we don't expect this to be a big issue on Windows regardless since it's a dynamically linked core that gets deallocated after unloading anyway. Most of the leaks on the statically linked consoles should be all gone, and that is what ultimately counts at the end of the day.

Description: This is a Quake 1 game engine core.

In addition to this core now using the VFS for file I/O, we also improved the following listed below.


The core would segfault under some circumstances when running the shareware version of Quake on Windows.

It turns out that the code makes a number of assumptions about the width of certain data types when casting pointers, which are not true on a number of platforms. On 64bit Windows this can cause pointer addresses to be determined incorrectly - leading to chaos.

We fixed the issue by using standard fixed-width types for the affected pointer casts. It also cleans up some other related compiler warnings.


Before, the core would segfault on certain platforms when loading PAK files from non-standard directories (anything other than id1, quoth, hipnotic, rogue) due to illegal usage of strncpy(). This can be observed most easily by attempting to run the shareware version of Quake from RetroArch's online content downloader.

We fixed this issue, and also cleaned up all file path handling in libretro.c (using libretro-common routines). A number of libretro-common files have also been updated to the latest version.


We fixed three sources of memory leaks in the core:

* A relatively minor one related to loading PAK files (the file handle was always left open)
* Two serious ones in the sprite handling code, which may potentially trigger multiple times per frame (and which were likely to cause crashes on RAM limited platforms...)


We have been spending time improving fMSX (MSX emulator core), PX68K (X68K emulator core), and Frodo (Commodore 64 emulator core), but are not quite done yet. We will probably spend some time detailing the changes to these cores by the time the next release comes along (two weeks from now).

For WiiU users: Frodo has been added to the WiiU build.

• Beetle PSX: Add static crop behavior for "Crop Overscan" alongside dynamic
• Beetle PSX: Set game specific tweak to get Monkey Hero running past the title screen
• FBNeo: Numerous updates - see below:
• FBNeo: CPS1 - fix Strider palette fades
• FBNeo: CPS1 - Stars: simplify/fix
• FBNeo: CPS2 - added Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers Super 2 (bootleg, USA 930911)
• FBNeo: CPS2 - Corrected some overdumps for Alien Vs Predator [Guru]
• FBNeo: Sync FB Neo with MAME 0.237
• FBNeo: Spectrum updates from gab75
• FBneo: Mega Drive updates from gab75
• FBNeo: NES updates from gab75 - also add Goemon 2 Translation (English)
• FBNeo: Fix Vigilante breakage
• FBNeo: M90 - Hiscore support
• FBNeo: PC Engine - Add sprite limit override DIP
• FBNeo: PC Engine - Fix timing, arrange render pipeline, scale windowing for Supergrafx
• FBNeo: Supergrafx - Dai Makai - perfect background scrolling fix
• FBNeo: SNK - Fix Psychos DIPs
• FBNeo: Colecovision - Fix v-linecount (glitch in Frogger)
• FBNeo: Pacman - added Buccaneer (set 2) [Jeremy Locke, Cam]
• FBNeo: d_seta.cpp: add dumps for plds in blandia set, and info for undumped plds
• FBNeo: neogeo: add "The King of Fighters '98 (Ratio hack)"
• FBNeo: d_cps2.cpp: add Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha (Asia 960805) [Genaro Rodarte]
• FBNeo: New WORKING clone - Floritas (Multivideo Spanish Moon Cresta bootleg) [Retromaniacs]
• FBNeo: Renamed 'spcdraga' as 'floritas'
• FBNeo: Add 'floritasm' and rename 'spcdraga' as 'floritas'
• FBNeo: Homogenized all "bootleg on Galaxian hardware" descriptions
• FBNeo: Now there's only one "Space Dragon" set
• Frodo: Added WiiU build
• Gambatte: Fix loading of custom palettes with CRLF line terminators
• Genesis Plus GX Wide: Fix specific Plane B scrolling bug - This bug occurred when HSRAM values for Plane B were `>= 0x10000 - config.h40_extra_columns * 4` (e.g., `0xFFD8` when h40_extra_columns = 10) because of a bit carry into the upper 16-bit word of `xscroll`.
• Kronos: Latest updates
• MAME2003 Plus: Improve sound tempo for Dolmen and Twin Action - some sound niggles a constant crackling noise still remain
• MAME2003 Plus: Use control name before universal default - uses the specific control name before filling with our universal defaults. Also update DAT.
• MAME2003 Plus: Support a couple more Afega games - these just hang off the standard NMK16 code so can be added easy enough to nmk16.c rather than afega.c which would be more complicated
• MAME2003 Plus: New gfx scrolling routine for Twin Action
• MAME2003 Plus: Speed up macro search - refine search to look for player specific joycodes.
• MAME2003 Plus: Add Amlogic S812 platform + cleanup unused vars in Makefile
• PCSX2: Numerous updates - see below:
• PCSX2: GS: Don't propagate 24bit textures on download
• PCSX2: GS: Properly loop when reading 32bit CLUT from offset
• PCSX2: GS: Fix up CLUT offset handling in 32bit I8 mode
• PCSX2: GameDB: Add gamefixes for Ruff Trigger
• PCSX2: GameDB: Port Iridium Runners patch, update fixes
• PCSX2: GameDB: Patch rounding problem in Playmobil Hype The Time Quest
• PCSX2: GameDB: Sports (RTL)
• PCSX2: GameDB: Katamari Games
• PCSX2: GameDB: add VU clamping to 'Enthusia Professional Racing'
• PCSX2: GameDB: fix serial for 'Panzer Elite Action - Fields of Glory'
• PCSX2: GameDB: add EE clamping to 'Max Payne 2 - The Fall of Max Payne'
• PCSX2: GameDB: add VU clamping to 'Battle Engine Aquila'
• PCSX2: GS-hw: Don't write clamped depth test value to depth buffer when ZMSK is enabled
• PCSX2: GameDB :add VU clamping to Monster Rancher 3
• PCSX2: GS-hw: Add Slam Tennis to automatic mipmapping.
• PCSX2: EE: Cyclerate > 1 caused some cycles to be lost
• PCSX2: GS-fx/glsl: Get rid of PS_ATST 0 condition. It does nothing so no need to have it in shader.
• PCSX2: SIF: Kind of revert a SIF timing change made a while back to fix Parappa the Rapper 2
• PCSX2: COP2: Fix reg allocation issue. Really fixes Devil May Cry which was a bug hidden by clamping hidden by a bug, yeah i think that covers it all...
• Yabause: Fix pixel format on android

1.9.13

• CHEEVOS/MSVC2010: Add Cheevos support
• CRT/SWITCHRES: Fixes some issue where scaling is incorrect in some video modes for CRT output.
• FRAMEDELAY: Add 'Automatic Frame Delay' option
• INPUT: Add 'All users control the menu' setting - any gamepad can control the menu when this is enabled. Only limitation right now is that only player 1 can toggle the menu, but any set Menu Toggle Controller Combo will work fine for all users, so this should be acceptable for now
• INPUT/UDEV: Fix Dolphin bar and safeguard against not adding devices with no mouse or touch buttons detected
• NETPLAY/CLI: -C/--connect commandline fix
• NETPLAY: Other improvements
• NETPLAY: Remove forced disconnection on unknown netplay command - will be backwards compatible with any version that removed this disconnect. instead of disconnecting, we just read the data and ignore, like most network implementations do
• TASKS/CHEEVOS: Replace coroutines with tasks/thread
• TASKS/DATABASE/EXPLORE: Initialise 'Explore' menu on a background thread - no more stall when hovering over the Explore tab

This patch is compatible with 0.2.10 game servers.

• Enemies: Fixed an issue where Zaeries sometimes wouldn't die.
  
  
• Audio: Improved FMOD error detection.

- Fixed a problem with the folder structure of the MAC build

A slight error correction

+ Added an additional mention of the "Dash" skill at the beginning of the second level (before that there was an implicit mention at the first level in the form of "Control + key icons")
+ When receiving damage, the fish becomes immune to damage for 1.5 seconds, but can still interact with food and crystals, both when moving and dashing

-Internal changes

An event-ful month passed by for Kandria! Lots of developments in terms of conferences and networking. This, in addition to falling ill for a few days, left little time for actual dev again, though even despite everything we still have some news to share on that front as well!

One of the major events this month was the Swiss-Polish game jam alongside GIC, which was organised largely by the Swiss embassy in Poland. Tim and I partnered up with three good fellows from Blindflug Studios, and made a small game called Eco Tower. The jam lasted only 48 hours, so it's nothing grand, but I'm still quite happy with how it turned out, and it was a blast working with the rest of the team!

You can find the game https://shinmera.itch.io/eco-tower.

The Game Industry Conference was pretty great! I had a fun time talking to the rest of Pro Helvetia and the other delegated teams, as well as the various attendees that checked out our booth. I wrote a lot more about it and the game jam in a previous weekly mailing list update, which, as an exception, you can see here.



Over the course of our Poland visit we were also informed that we'd been accepted into the Digital Dragons Accelerator programme, which is very exciting! Digital Dragons is a Polish conference and organisation to support games, and with this new accelerator programme they're now also reaching out to non-polish developers to support their projects. Only 13 teams out of 97 from all over Europe were chosen, so we're really happy to have been accepted!

As part of the programme we'll be partnered with a Polish publishing company to settle on and then together achieve a set of milestones, over which the grant money of over 50k€ will be paid out. The partner will not be our publisher, just a partner, for the duration of this programme.

Now, you may be wondering what's in it for Poland, as just handing out a load of money to external studios sounds a bit too good to be true, and indeed there's a small catch. As part of the programme we have to first establish a company in Poland, to which the grant will be paid out, and with the hopes that you'll continue using this company after the accelerator ends. We're now in the process of establishing this company, and have already signed a contract with a law firm to help us out with everything involved.

In any case, this is all very exciting, and I'm sure we'll have more to share about all of this as time goes on.

Then this week was the Nordic Games Winter conference, with another MeetToMatch platform. We were also accepted into its "publisher market", which had us automatically paired up with 10 publishing firms for pitches on Tuesday. That, combined with law firm meetings, meant that on Tuesday I had 12 meetings almost back to back. Jeez!

I'm not hedging my bets on getting any publishing deals out of this yet, but it is still a great opportunity to grow our network and get our name and game out there into the collective mind of the industry. The response from the recruiters also generally seems favourable, which is really cool.

I do wish we had a new trailer though. While I still think our current VS trailer is good, I've now had to listen to it so many times during pitches and off that I really can't stand it anymore, ha ha! We'll hold off on that though, creating new content and hammering out that horizontal slice is far more important at this stage.

There was a hotfix release along the line that clears out a bunch of critical bugs, and adds a few small features as well. You can get it from your usual link, or by signing up.



We're now well into the horizontal slice development, and I've started hammering out the level design for the lower part of region 1. I'm still very slow-going on that since I just lack the experience to do it easily, which in turn makes me loathe doing it, which in turn makes me do less of it, which in turn does not help my experience. Woe is me! Anyway, I'll just grit my teeth for now and get as much done as I can I'll get better over time I'm sure!

As part of the level design process I've also started implementing more platforming mechanics such as the slide move, lava and oil liquids, a dash-recharge element, and recallable elevators. I'll have to add a few more things still, such as crumbling platforms, springs and springboards, wind, exhaust pipes, and conveyor belts.

This month has been horizontal slice quest development, with the trip to Poland for GIC sandwiched in the middle. I'm sure Nick has covered this in depth above, but I wanted to add that it was an amazing experience for me: travelling to Poland and seeing a new country and culture (St. Martin's croissants / Rogals are AMAZING); the game jam where although as a writer I was somewhat limited (helped a bit with design, research and playtesting), it was nevertheless a great experience with the best result - and I got to shake hands with the Swiss ambassador!; the GIC conference itself, where it was a great feeling with Kandria live on the show floor, and watching players and devs get absorbed; the studio visit with Vile Monarch and 11 bit (Frostpunk is one of my favourite games). But the best thing was the people: getting to meet Nick in real life and see the man behind the magic, not to mention all the other devs, industry folk, and organisers from Switzerland and Poland. It was a real privilege to be part of the group.

I've also been continuing to help with the meet-to-match platform for both GIC, and Nordic Game this past week, filtering publishers to suit our needs and booking meetings. Aside from that, it's now full steam ahead on the horizontal slice! With the quest document updated with Nick's feedback, it's a strong roadmap for me to follow. I'm now back in-game getting my hands dirty with the scripting language - it feels good to be making new content, and pushing the story into the next act beyond the vertical slice.

Fred's been very busy implementing the new moves for the Stranger, as well as doing all the animations for new NPC characters that we need in the extended storyline. One thing I'm very excited about is the generic villagers, as I want to add a little AI to them to make them walk about and really make the settlements feel more alive!







Similarly, Mikel's been hard at work finalising the tracks for the next regions and producing variants for the different levels of tension. I'm stoked to see how they'll work in-game! Here's a peek at one of the tracks:

• Magma Chamber

I'll take this moment to indulge in a little side project. For some years now I've been producing physical desktop calendars, with my own art, design, and distribution thereof. If you like the art I make or would simply like to support what we do and get something small out of it, consider get one on Gumroad.



As always, let's look at the roadmap from last month.

• Fix reported crashes and bugs
  
• Add a update notice to the main screen to avoid people running outdated versions
  
• Implement some more accessibility options
  
• Implement more combat and platforming moves
  
• Implement RPG mechanics for levelling and upgrades (partially done)
  
• Explore platforming items and mechanics (partially done)
  
• Practise platforming level design (partially done)
  
• Draft out region 2 main quest line levels and story
  
• Draft out region 3 main quest line levels and story
  
• Complete the horizontal slice

Well, we're starting to crunch away at that horizontal slice content. Still got a long way to go, though!

As always, I sincerely hope you give the new demo a try if you haven't yet. Let us know what you think when you do or if you have already!

In our latest update we fixed and changed some stuff in our game! We want to thank you for all your's suggestions and bugs reports!
What have changed?

-Fixed bug that caused blocking in the locker room at the beginning of the day by Side Quest - Thieves

-Fixed a bug where the document could not be picked up in the document checking routine

-Added the ability to assign Sprint and Crouch keys

-A lot of languages and text errors have been corrected

-Added the ability to skip cutscenes (intro)

-The appearance of purchased workstations in the Workshop has been improved

-Fixed the positioning of NPCs using purchased workstations in the workshop

-Now you can name your prisoners in your own language

-Fixed a bug that prevented the max strenght from being maxed out

-Added the ability to change the costumes of block B prisoners in the shop

-Shortening the first 3 days into 2 routines

Also every player can get a special skins for prisoners!
Like the one from "Octopus Game" mode or classic black-white stripped one!
But you must achieve level 3 in game to do so!







Best regards,
Prison Simulator Team


https://store.steampowered.com/app/842180/Prison_Simulator/