• Fixed: Problem in end-of-game display when no peasants died
  
• Fixed: Correct name on monster info window
  
• Improved bug tracking to collect more informative error messages

Hello everyone,

Build 63 will be uploaded some time tonight. Unfortunately not everything went to plan this week because I spent most of the time in bed feeling rather unwell. My colleague and I will be adding the new goldfish into the game next week instead. Fortunately I was able to spend some time fixing important bugs today and yesterday.

There was a particularly ugly bug pointed out to us by some players. When time is sped up and there is a lot of floating food in the aquarium there would be some fish that mysteriously find their way out of the aquarium and cannot get back in. Fixing a bug like this is quite difficult to solve unless I can recreate it on my computer and study it's causes.



This meant that I had to spend a lot of time watching aquariums with time sped up and lots of floating food until fish would get pushed out. Luckily I was able to reliably recreate the bug and I believe the cause has been found and fixed. There is some code in place that will teleport fish back into the aquarium if they are detected outside of it if it turns out the cause was not in fact fixed.

Floating items like food should no longer clump up in the corner like they do in the above gif. However if you load a scene that contains clumped together food then it will still be clumped. The fix prevents unclumped food becoming clumped. It also works for floating plants like water lettuce. The code that helps calculate the motion of buoyant objects has been made simpler, smaller and faster as a result.

There were a few bugs fixed that affected the nudge tool if used when time was sped up. That seems to now be working as desired too.

There was an adjustment made to how sensitive the sound and music volume sliders are. Lowering them to around 40% made them almost impossible to hear. This also depends on volume settings players have for their speakers and the overall volume settings that the windows operating system controls. It could be rather tedious for players to get that right because it could mean adjusting three sets of volume controls but this should make it a little easier.

Well it was a slightly smaller update this week than we had hoped but next week should be pretty good indeed. We wish you all a lovely weekend.

The Fishery Team

Hey everyone,

It's time to level up your cleaning. You were once a washing heavy but now, the world will kneel before your spraying power as you become a professional! In today's log, we take a close look at the highly anticipated Professional Duty power washer the Prime Vista PRO which arrives next patch.

Last week we showed off one of the accessibility additions coming with the FOV slider, you can learn more about that here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1290000/announcements/detail/4351035102300600897

We don't have a date for 0.7 just yet, but keep an eye on our socials for intensifying teasers and the launch announcement soon. Now, to unleash the power of the clean side.




The ‘Prime Vista PRO’ has been revealed! This eagerly anticipated professional-grade power washer eclipses the heavy-duty washer’s cleaning abilities, cutting through rust with ease. It can also deal with oily stains while using the yellow or even green nozzle.



It’s a great upgrade to help tackle the upcoming jobs in career mode. And once you’ve purchased Prime Vista PRO, why not try using it on some of earlier jobs in Free Play mode to see what a difference it makes!

Behold, stats! Oh, and how much money you'll be dishing out for this washer!



This week we have some insights straight from the devs both on creating this new washer from its art and gameplay design aspects.

For more on the design side, here's Dan:

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author

Since the very start of the project, we were careful to leave ourselves enough headroom to create four different duties of pressure washer, each with increasing power.

In the game’s shop the Professional Duty power washer slot has been waiting to be populated since our early access launch and has always been something we looked forward to finalising and balancing.

The stats and variables for each washer duty class have been following a steady upward trend and the professional washer continues that trajectory faithfully, making it feel like a natural step up from the Heavy-Duty washer before it.

A new tier of dirt type has always accompanied each duty upgrade also. For the Medium Duty washer, it was ‘Stubborn’ dirt (mainly represented by Graffiti). For the Heavy Duty it was ‘Ingrained’ dirt (most commonly Rust). This time the final dirt tier ‘Oily’ will start to make an appearance in the jobs. The ‘Professional’ power washer certainly helps with removing those Oil spills!

Torger, who worked on the art side of making the Prime Vista Pro, had this to say:

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author

The new professional washer was a much-awaited addition to the game as our first new washer, so we wanted to make it a bit special. We had a few challenges with this washer design. So far we've generally increased the size of higher tiers to indicate their more powerful nature, but we found this difficult with this washer. Both due to it losing its believable look and also due to some constraints with reusing our common washer animations and grab poses. Instead, we changed the Prime Vista brand colour scheme and design language somewhat to be sleeker and more modern as an indication of its high quality and power.

References included sleek modern white coloured appliances such as popular cellular devices and smaller elements from a couple of sci-fi designs. In addition to the new white colour, we also moved slightly away from the mostly plastic look common to previous washer models and most real washers in general. Instead, we added prominent chrome metal elements in several places to indicate a high-quality finish.

We also created new chunky circular nozzles and, although our game is a peaceful one they are slightly reminiscent of gun muzzle brakes. If you look closely, in addition to the standard nozzle colour coding they also re-use shapes from the older washer nozzles to assist with readability. Mixed together with a few design cues commonly used on the rest of the prime vista washer range gave us most of our design, a more refined tool for the real professional.

Overall we hope you have a blast when the new update drops and you can take on the role of a true professional power washer.




Thanks for reading this pro dev log. we still have big surprises coming in 0.7, be sure to keep an eye on our socials and tune into our next dev log for more teasers!

Next week we'll introduce one of the new levels coming, can you guess what it is from this screenshot?



We'll see you there.

If you want to vote on new game ideas, talk to the community, find some tough dirt - then join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/powerwashsimulator

Keep up with everything PowerWash Simulator by following our channels:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PowerWashSim
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/futurlab
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@powerwashsim?
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/powerwashsim/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/powerwashsim
PWS Wiki: https://powerwash-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/PowerWash_Simulator_Wiki

We know it’s been a hot minute since we last posted anything. Don’t worry, we weren’t lounging around in the dissecting room, even though it may have seemed this way!

Well… the day has finally come and we have some exciting news to share with you today!

We know that you – our dear pathologists, are eager to put your scalpels on the body called Autopsy Simulator!


We would like to make sure each one of our pathologists hears about it and gets a chance to put their name on the list, so you’ll be able to sign up for quite a while!

You may ask yourself ‘but how do I get access to it?'
It’s quite simple – just head over to our store page and click ‘SIGN UP’ or click on the logo below that will take you there in the blink of an eye!


Once the registration is over, you will receive an email with an invitation, so make sure to check it regularly!
There are also some other cosmetic changes we have made. During our absence new banners, posters and logos were designed!
We're happy to present them below.




To get you warmed up before your night in the dissecting room, we have prepared some screenshots from our DEMO that will hopefully make the adrenaline rush through your veins!








If you're looking for more pathologists to discuss the medical cases and autopsies with, join our Discord ⬇️⬇️⬇️


We hope to see you in the dissecting room. Time to get your hands dirty, doc!

Woodland Games

This Advent 3 book unlocks 24 additional levels for Coloring Pixels! Our Third visit to an Advent Calendar themed book to get you in the Holiday spirit!

The images will start locked and open daily like a real advent calendar so make sure you pick this up before December 1st to get the full experience!

Available for the price of $1.00, £0.79, (or your regional equivalent). The pack will release on the 26th of November at 20:00 UTC/12:00 PST.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1826630/

For the chance to win the Advent 3 pack for FREE, make sure you join our Discord and take part in the competition!
https://discord.gg/wwXVWvA

Client side:

0001946: Third-person view (chase or mounted camera views?)

0001950: Use mouse wheel to zoom in and out up to 2x for looking at MFD, etc

In the process of adding support for external views of our own vehicle we discovered that the inside of the bay disappeared as soon as the first bay door closes... should be the last one.

Couple fixes for MuVER cockpit interior (windows lost texture assignment).

Fix for thrust sound continuing when switching from a vehicle to an interior space.

Now setting the TX/TY/TZ for our own vehicle and got rid of local variables to support our own thrust cones.

Moved ground speed calculations and made smoother and more responsive for ground vehicles.

Server side:

Blitz index suggested that the computed fields for Latitude and Longitude on the Colony Territory record was heavy ... determined that those fields were unnecessary and removed.

Fixed erroneous toast for when players don't get an inventory bonus and cut down on items awarded during salvage operations.

Battle Royale ring location has been updated and fixed to Chojeir Military Base.

Fix for colonists murdering one another.

Fix for admin token not in admin token collection when using the admin interface.

Tweaking visibility based on turbidity.

Removed old fading Fleet bank logo.

Updates to the parking system, Easydock website, DIHV commodity buy/sell decisions, and expiration of Player Portal tokens.

Wow, has it really been just one month?

It almost seems too hard to believe, because SO many things have changed in the game since then - and we just can't stop working on adding more stuff, right as you are reading these lines.

Let's try and summarize the most important stuff that's happened recently, shall we?


This issue of developer diaries is accompanied with us releasing a whole new trailer for Learning Factory! It’s not just updating the graphics to the latest version, as we did before: we’ve filmed and edited it in accordance to the feedback we received from players and fellow indie developers. More cats, less uncertainty of what the game’s all about!

It was also part of our plan of re-inventing our Steam Page, to make the essence of the game clear to our future players. We’ve updated descriptions, screenshots, GIFs and whatnot… But we still ain’t 100% sure if the message we’re trying to communicate is clear enough.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1150090/Learning_Factory/

That’s where we need you, the community! We’d like to ask you to turn on your phone camera, point it on the screen with Learning Factory Steam page opened, and record 1-5 minutes of your impressions. We will make sure you get a honourable mention in the game’s credits, as this feedback helps us improve the game tremendously!

If you’re ready to participate, you can find all the required info (along with a sample video) in this Google form.


Previously, KOTOVOD was standing confidently on a huge chunk of land. It could definitely use some landscape. We have lots of plans for making the landscape of the game more diverse and interesting. The coolest things (like, biomes!) are expected to start emerging a bit later on, but you can get the taste of what's coming - that's what newly introduced lakes and rivers are for.

As it sometimes happens with us, we were not planning to implement water obstacles at this stage of development, but while we were designing Hardcore Tutorials (see below), we’ve been experimenting with terraforming tools in the Scenario Editor… At some point, we’ve added a river just for the hell of it… and it looked SO good on the map, it was an instant keeper!



So, these days rivers are present on the campaign map (starting from version 0.10.45; if your saved game is from an older version, you’d need to start a new campaign), along with a bunch of watery map presets for the Freeplay mode. Feel free to experiment with them, they’re adding a whole new level of challenge for your logistics skills!

Of course, rivers can be easily crossed under the ground (for now, that is), but we’ve also introduced a new tool to help you on the surface: please welcome the mighty ‘Beaverborn’ Raft! It's built of Wood, it's crafted in 'Terraforming' tab and it supports Optic Cables and Transporters, along with your character! Use it wisely.




Hopefully, we all can agree: lengthy tutorials are just BORING. We respect our players and their time, that’s why we are trying to make that mandatory part of the game as compact as is reasonably possible.

Still, we’ve found out that some players have issues with understanding some later stage, more complicated game mechanics. It’s totally on us, as it is our job as developers - to make the game comprehensive and comfortable for you. We’ll keep improving UX, and in the meantime - please feel free to check our new ‘Tutorials’ section in the main menu.

There you will find answers to the hottest questions! How to build a tunnel? How to connect machine learning models into networks? How to disconnect them?! And if you’re completely clueless, there’s a ‘Factory 101’ tutorial, which helps you learn the ropes of your campus. See? We’ve got you covered!

Let us know if there are any other issues you’d like us to clear out? There’s Discord for that!

Of course, all money from sales in Cat Stores will ultimately be used for funding researches and pushing cat science forward. However, it used to be that all money were automatically spent on funding ongoing research projects. But what if you were looking to save money for hiring that genius of a cat researcher? Or maybe you just wanted to get filthy rich?!

Previously, the only way to accumulate money was to either put research on hold or become super effective and generate way more income than you were spending. But from now on, you’re welcome to redistribute some of your funds to your Deposit. It’s very simple:



1 - Click ‘Deposit’ button in the Inventory
2 - Choose the share of your income that will be stored on your Deposit (sorry for the copywriting, that money definitely isn’t free, but earned with your hard work! We’ll fix it in the next update)
3 - If required, select the limit of money to be accumulated on your Deposit
4 - You can also instantly transfer half or all your money from your Deposit to working funds, and vice versa

What would you like to spend that precious dough on? Don’t hesitate to send us your ideas, we’re always happy to discuss them as we’re thinking of more ways to use them in the game. But there’s that one feature we were planning to add from the very beginning of the development…

Are you familiar with feeling that frustration, when certain goods are just sitting in your Storages, because cats who are supposed to buy them, just don’t arrive from the Gates often enough? Well, there now is a solution! They say you need to spend money to earn money, so please welcome the newly invented Advertising Cat Gate!



Not only it brings cats to your Factory, it allows you place paid ads in the cat internet, giving you a chance to invite kitties of your choosing! Since it’s the future here at KOTOVOD, you don’t need to other with coming up with ad campaign concept and reaching your audience: just throw some money into the Advertising Cat Gate, and let computers do the job! Follow these easy steps to success:



1 - Select one or more desired cat types
2 - Choose the amount of money per ad. Obviously, the more demanding cats won't click on some cheap banner, so plan accordingly
3 - Watch your campaign unfolding! If a cat has clicked an ad, that kitty will emerge from the Gate
4 - Remember that you can pause your campaign at any time
5 - The part of ad mechanics, involving simulated annealing, will be revealed a bit later on. For now we’re looking into several options: our initial plan was to implement it in the form of procedurally generated ad banner… But this very likely to change

Smaller awesome stuff is happening here and there. Our Graphic Card Assembler is now animated, adding even more motivation for you to research it (in addition to being able to produce video cards in unlimited amounts):



Perks for cat researchers in Labs have also been made more comprehensive. Also, no more spawning of scientists with mutually exclusive perks! Some of them can also get productivity boosts if receiving certain kinds of data from Data Storages:




We’re now working on a rather experimental mechanic, that goes under the code name ‘The Flask’. To describe what it does is not at all an easy task. Its mission is to bring closer the gameplay and the story. The way we see it, it should become the narrative center of the game — for those who think that chill cat Factory building is not enough and keep asking ‘Why?’… As we see it now, it will be a series of gameplay challenges, that push the story forward and impact your Factory both in terms of gameplay and visuals.

We won’t go into too much details at the moment, because, as it happens in video game development, things might turn out unexpectedly and the concept will change, maybe even more than once. For now, just know that we are thinking on how to add more sense to what’s happening around KOTOVOD

In the meantime, our artist Sergei from Siberia, keeps making the game prettier for you! For the past week, he’s work is all about METAL (and making new key art for Learning Factory, too):







And here's your monthly portion of our bosses' photos:











See you in a month with yet another report, friendly engineers! But if you've got thoughts to share, there's no point in waiting, come talk to us directly:

• Twitter
  
• Discord

P.S. If you want to keep an eye our progress closer, don't forget to follow Learning Factory on our Steam page and never miss an update again!




Going to Early Access is but the first step to glory (and eternal cat happiness). Wanna be part of what happens next? Head to this blog post and learn how to help make the game even more awesome!

Learning Factory needs your help! Record a 10 or more minutes of you playing the game, share a video using any way you see fit, write your name into Learning Factory credits and get a promo cat! Make history here

Happy Friday, RoboCo Enthusiasts!

It’s no secret that game development is a team-effort. Games like Fortnite and Pokémon have hundreds of developers, each focused on unique aspects of the game. RoboCo’s team is a bit on the smaller side, but we’re no less mighty!

Some of these names you may recognize from previous blogs or Inside RoboCo Episodes. Others you may have never heard before. Regardless, RoboCo wouldn’t be where it is today without their contributions and exceptional hard work, so make sure you give them a (virtual) round of applause.

So, without further ado, here’s our development team!



Kenny Green - Producer
Ever the competitor, Kenny doesn’t back down from a challenge. He enjoys learning from each project and sharing those lessons with new teams. You might even catch him occasionally wearing his varsity esports jersey while leading a standup.



Luke Jayapalan - Lead Game Designer
Once upon a time, Luke, a game designer, Joe, a UX/UI designer, Jon, a game engineer, and Lynden, a 3-D artist, were assembled and asked to pitch and prototype an ambitious STEM learning game in VR that could appeal to both EDU and general game-playing audiences. This became RoboCo. It's been a wild ride ever since, full of new and interesting design challenges every day. Luke has been blessed to have so many skilled people come together to build the little robot sandbox game that could.



Joe Horan - UX/UI and Challenge Designer
Joe makes games.



Alan Martin - Challenge Designer
Driven by the lasting impression that games can leave on players, Alan loves collaborating across roles to craft engaging experiences. If not designing games, he can be found under a blanket or at a heavy metal concert.



Carter Williams - Game Engineer
Carter enjoys making simple games. He thinks learning is fun and that multiplayer and coop games have incredible potential as an art form. In his spare time, Carter likes being bad at hard video games.



Nick Curto - Game Engineer
Nick is passionate about games and the good they can do. He likes group bike rides, reading non-fiction, and rhythm games. Nick is a golf enthusiast but wishes the sport was more action-packed.



Luis Garcia Remes - Game Engineer
Luis is an avid gamer and game engineer. He enjoys working on gameplay and AI. He also enjoys playing and designing board games/card games.



Demetri Sofides - 3D Artist

Demetri wants to use video games to make complex topics engaging and accessible. He worked at a VR studio before coming to Filament, and spends his free time sketching concept art and poring over word etymologies.



Josh Bartels - Audio and Video Director
What does photosynthesis sound like? What music should accompany virtual reality robots? These are the kind of questions Josh creatively answers as Sound Designer and Music Composer. From 1920’s ragtime, to futuristic space, he provides all the acoustic color! He also produces RoboCo’s trailers!



Austin Smythe - QA Lead
Austin is a UW-Stout graduate that comes to Filament from Activision Blizzard. As a quality assurance analyst, Austin has the privilege to play games and type a lot!



Georgia Adkins - QA Analyst
Georgia developed a keen interest in education while teaching English overseas before ultimately venturing into the field of educational games. She assists in testing various projects and values the joy and challenge in attempting to break things.



Brian Czech - QA Analyst
Brian has been doing software QA since 2007. He tested Epic’s CVIS for 5 years before making the switch to Filament in 2013. In his free time he enjoys biking, canoeing, travelling, reading, trying new beers, and relaxing with his wife, sons, and dog.


We've been working on RoboCo for a while! Although the folks below are not working on RoboCo right now, having moved to other cool projects at the studio or other studios, we want to recognize their awesome contributions as part of RoboCo's long history!

Liam Craffey - Producer
Jon Kieffer - Game Engineer
Autumn Beauchesne - Game Engineer
Mark Savage - Additional Engineering
Megan Tyler - 3D Artist
Flora Yu - 3D Artist
Meghan Connor - 3D Artist
Lynden Fenske - Additional 3D Art
Alex Yaeger - 2D Artist
Roma Jensen - Additional 2D Art
Nell Farrell - QA Analyst
Abraham Linsenmayer - QA Assistant


Great games aren’t solely the product of great developers. To make a game of this scope, you also need a team of professional marketers, sales reps, executives, managers and more. Every member of Filament Games has contributed to RoboCo’s development, whether it’s helping secure sponsorships, drafting content for social media, budgeting, maintaining our offices and computers, assisting in production or engineering, and playtesting.

RoboCo is the biggest game Filament has ever produced, and the only reason we were able to get this far is that everyone in our studio lent a helping (robotic) hand.

To learn more about the world-class staff of Filament Games, check out our staff page: Meet the Team | Filament Games.

And that’s this week’s DevBlog! We hope you enjoyed learning more about RoboCo’s development team and Filament Games as a whole. Tune in next time for a special update from our very own Luke Jayapalan, who has some exciting RoboCo updates to talk about!

Also, make sure to check out https://www.fgrc21.roboco.co/ to learn more about the First Global RoboCo Challenge! We just finished our qualifier rounds today, so make sure to check out RoboCo’s Twitch and YouTube channels to see if your country will advance to the playoffs!

For the latest news on RoboCo, follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok! You can also connect with other community members and us by joining our official Discord and Reddit!

Don’t forget to add RoboCo to your Steam Wishlist!

Greetings Chefs!

We've just pulled a fresh Steam Hotfix out of the oven and dished it out for some issues that have been noticed since launch last week!

Here is a list of fixes for this Steam Hotfix:

• If the player swaps restaurant menu dishes with previously occupied empty slots the game will not save correctly
  
• Simplified Chinese - Missing characters / empty squares can be seen in text after ~1hr of gameplay
  
• The player will become softlocked on the construction screen if they try to add a locked item to the shortcut bar
  
• Incorrect quest name is shown for the 'Peel the Magic - Meet Valzoy' Main Quest
  
• Unable to scroll through tabs on the Settings menu with a Controller or Keyboard
  
• Button prompts that appear in tutorial popups do not update dynamically when the input method changes
  
• Some button prompts do not update when swapping control input methods in the 'Wardrobe' menu
  
• Some button prompts do not update when swapping control input methods in the 'Quest' menu
  
• After tabbing with a controller in the in-game settings menu, the controller image will not display
  
• Yard assets disappear upon returning to the yard after using the aerobarge
  
• Various fixes for SFX not being affected by the audio slider

We hope this hotfix helps you enjoy your time in Ambrosia even more! If you find any issues, please log them on our Report a Problem forum so the team can investigate!

To keep up to date with all the information on Epic Chef, go to www.visitambrosia.com – the official website of the Concordian Tourism Board – like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and join us on Discord.

The Sci-Fi Pack is coming to Kid Hallow! It will be a free update with 20some new tiles/monsters/etc, 3 new costumes, new backgrounds and music, and some special features.

Remember Pressure Pads? Ah, such fun. Well, at first a Multipass seems like the same thing:


Step inside the Multipass, stuff switches!


But it's called a Multipass for a reason! It's kind of the opposite of a Pressure Pad - instead of triggering when anybody steps on any of them, it triggers only once all of them are occupied (and untriggers as soon as anybody leaves). So it's about setting up a situation where you get somebody or something onto all of the Multipasses. Pressure Pads send a spark downward (if there's a wire below them) as soon as someone steps on them. Multipasses won't send a spark (upwards) until all Multipasses of the same color are occupied. Also, it goes in the Overlay Layer rather than the normal Tile Layer. It's not the most amazing and unique element, but I think it adds a couple new types of puzzles you can build. That's the goal with this pack, to create things that open up new level design possibilities instead of just more monsters to bite you.




We got a full-on video for you today! The Kid may not be the biggest powerhouse in the game (in fact, he is definitely the weakest, by a mile), but with a Power Pill, he can actually start to do some stuff that nobody else can do. I made sure to stay true to his complete inability to harm anyone, but at least he can get a little pushy now.