This week we mainly focused on game mechanics and worked on several backend requirements for the mobile version of Feign. Here you can see the list of items fixed/updated related to the game mechanics.

• We have seen that spamming of some actions were affecting game stability so we limited these actions up to 6 times per second as a maximum (Role usage at night, voting and pressing space to show you are talking )
  
• Snitch is nerfed. Now only the Snitch sees the actual role now of the snitched person. It is up to you to believe him or not.
  
  
• Language font support is upgraded to solve unsupported fonts that were causing squares to appear for names of players and for messages in lobby chat.
  
• Voting system is updated. Now a person is kicked out of the town only if he/she receives majority of the votes. Also votes that were not being used until the timer runs out are counted as skip votes. Also in the event of a tie of votes no one is kicked out of the town. So a couple of voting examples are here to make it easier to understand:
  [**] Person A (3 Votes) - Person B (4 Votes) - Skip (1 Vote) - #of alive and not voted people (4) = No one is kicked out of the town
  [**] Person A (3 Votes) - Person B (4 Votes) - Skip (1 Vote) - #of alive and not voted people (2) = Person B is kicked out of the town
  [**] Person A (4 Votes) - Person B (4 Votes) - Skip (1 Vote) - #of alive and not voted people (1) = No one is kicked out of the town
  [**] Person A (4 Votes) - Person B (2 Votes) - Skip (1 Vote) - #of alive and not voted people (3) = No one is kicked out of the town

Things have been progressing steadily last week. I’ve made some changes to the shaders to make the new biomes look better, and I’ve also built quite a few new paths to explore - which is what I want to talk about today.

Essentially, the exploration side of the game has come about through the experience we’ve had with the game early on. We realised that running around on an island world from a first person perspective necessarily brought with it a desire to explore the surroundings and get an advantage from this - even when it doesn’t strictly fall into the traditional aspects of the RTS genre. Especially finding new mineral deposits and chests turned into a really fun aspect of the game, and we wanted to double down on this when creating our new island. Part of this might have been excitement about creating our own worlds and the assets which populated them - but we find it persisted beyond our expectations and carried across to our players too.

As a result, we decided to hide quite a few possible rewards and cool views across the island, to be discovered by players as they are exploring the world. This comes with a few important considerations which we are still working through:

Since all of our rewards are random, we quickly realised that following a long path up a mountain only to find… nothing, is quite frustrating. In general, we think that getting some form of payoff whenever the player decides to go off on a tangent from their initial path is quite important. Likewise it is important that there is at least the chance of getting a substantial reward, otherwise going off on these excursions does not make any sense. We are still working on the balance regarding what we put at the end of the paths, but we will at least attempt to take these realisations into account. We have plenty of ideas for rewards which make the effort worthwhile. We just need to balance it and maintain a level of surprise rather than an expectation.

While putting rewards at the end of paths is one thing, another important consideration is how easy it is to get to these paths. We’ve all played games in which a perfectly scalable hill or small fence turns out to be an invisible wall - which can be quite frustrating, especially if a similarly looking hill right next to it can be walked up. However, if we do not constrain where players can go, a player could potentially walk up a hill we never intended to be scalable, only to be met with the frustration of finding nothing. We therefore need to carefully consider how easy we make it to follow each path, and how easy we make it to traverse a part of the map that isn’t a path at all.

Considering the above, a good compromise solution may be to make the paths more easily identifiable. If we place subtle hints along the path as to where the path is going and that the player is in fact following a path, it may make it less frustrating to explore. The player can easily tell when they are following a path that will yield a reward, and when they are just scaling a hill for a better vantage point or to cut across the map to get somewhere quicker. We haven’t quite figured out how to mark the paths, but this may be a way to get around both the issue of rewards and the issue of accessibility. We have had thoughts, like specific flowers, or particle effects - or even ground texture differences, though we are yet to commit to our approach!

As we keep building the world, I will keep adding more interesting paths to explore, and will keep you updated on what we decide regarding the points above!

Until next week!

Small fix to address missing thumbnails for SASS targets

Hello friends,

This update is all about style and the colors. There has been a huge redesign and retexturing of the models, and menus, to make the game feel more stylised and handpainted. We are really happy with the new look and feel. Here is a list of the more important changes:


Graphics:
- Almost all of the game biomes got retextured and many models were updated or replaced.
- New animations for the main character.
- New animations for the interactable objects.
- New animations for the traps and gates.
- New "Take damage" overlay.

GUI:
- New main menu and cover on the start screen.
- New Map images.
- Created completely new UI control system, which is implemented in the main menu and is about to fully replace the old one in future versions.
- Improved Loading and structuring of the menus.
- New style and fonts for the ingame messages.

Gameplay:
- Soul now drops and stacks on piles instead of being individual particles.
- Level design improved to balance some areas that were too difficult.

Engine:
- Game is updated to run on the new version of Unity 3D.
- Movement and skill usage of the player are completely redesigned.
- Added subtle idle camera movement.
- The system to control camera movement is completely redesigned.
- Improved mobs battle AI.
- Improvement mobs movement.
- Improved Loading
- Improved structure of the game scenes to allow multiple game modes.
- Game now starts immediatelly after loading new area instead of waiting for input.
- Improved music transitions.
- Improved menu screens fade-in and fade-out.

There are many new features and content that we are working on, but did not get released in this update, That includes the long awaited multiplayer. We are still testing and tweaking it and expect to gradually include it in the next updates. Thanks to everybody in the community for the support!

If you want to help testing or just keep a close eye on the development, you are welcome to join us: https://discord.gg/nQjdRCM

1.0.0.48
- Send constructive feedback to stage creator via Stage Central
- Auto Generate Stage Brief has better grammar
- Lock faultlines to X or Y to keep them straight (during draw use ALT key to straighten)
- Rotate, Tilt and Yaw objects by 1deg increments using ALT key in combination with Q,E,R,F,T,G,Z,X
- Display prop transforms in the status bar
- New Props:
- JPL Open Gun prop
- IPSC Mini Target
- Cowboy Action Steel Targets
- Evil Roy 16x24
- Buffalo 24x17
- Club, Diamond, Heart, Spade 16x16
- Tombstone & coffin 14x24
- circle and square 16x16
- BUG Fixes
- Fixed ipsc-hc-bottom collision
- Fixed saving textures for basic shape bays
- Fixed handling of cloning waypoints and sequence
- Fixed bullets not registering when fired at close targets
- Drawable faultlines can now be resized
- Adjusted faultline length
- When placing new objects, sometimes it's not centered at 0,0,0
- Fixed showing highlights around objects

There are 25 unique achievements you can unlock. And the best part?... If you've already played the game, you'll auto-unlock the achievements you should have so you don't have to replay parts of the game!

Thank you all for playing my game! Join the Discord Server to stay up to date with the latest news and updates! Let me know any updates or features you want to see featured in Island Crusaders.

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Hi friends,

We're currently in the final stages for Alpha 8, hoping to release it to our gold supporters by early December.

Before we go into details, let's take a look at the updated Steam wishlist: 25,164!

The previous traffic system was pretty complicated to set up and also regularly caused trouble when playing. Our gold supporters can tell stories about massive traffic jams, blocked road crossings, and trucks getting stuck when turning around corners.

The new system is less complex and easy to configure. We hope that this will massively improve traffic flow and gameplay. Don't worry - we'll still try our best to assure you get some authentic New York traffic jams in the final version.


(click for high resolution)

While Jonas #1 was working on the new traffic system, Jonas #2 started working on a much-needed upgrade to the car controller, meaning the mechanics you use when driving around in your own car.

Gold supporters will instantly notice how much easier it is to control their car, especially when parking.

Cars will now tell you which direction they're planning to go! Except for those few annoying idiots who always go the opposite direction or don't know how to use indicators at all. You all know what I'm talking about!


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Additionally, we improved all the car lights for a more realistic impression.


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In our last devlog, we looked into the new marketing agency. The first version only allows you to market on the internet. This week, the 3D team has been busy adding real-world advertising billboards to the city. We're still working on it, but it's starting to look pretty good!


(click for high resolution)

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David#NaN has just finished the character customization at the beginning of a new game. You can choose your name, sex, skin and hair color as well as your face and clothes. Just be yourself! Or anyone you like to be...


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We weren't happy about the always empty shopping baskets when buying booze and souvenirs. That's why they'll now change their appearance depending on the number of items inside. Just a minor change but feels so much better now!


(click for high resolution)

Yay, your customers now get their own capacity! Only one beer and two cigars per person!

No, that's for sure not what we meant with this headline. Instead, your shops will get a capacity limit. It is based on the store size and furnishing. Metal shelves, cash registers, and everything else will have a limited serving capacity. To get more customers into your gift shop it might be necessary to buy another shelf.


(click for high resolution)

• #81 - Not Starting work if clicked before shift time
  
• #126 - Wrong grammar in Research Data Page
  
• #134 - Very slow scrolling in Purchase Screen When Queueing
  
• #194 - Drive-in wholesale store Bizman view doesn't show market value and building size.
  
• #249 - Income Statement has no padding at the bottom
  
• #255 - Slow scrolling in cargo list
  
• #256 - Options dialog (Save / Quit) opens behind cargo dialog
  
• #325 - The first time opening BizMan after loading a game, "Insight" doesn't immediately get underlined if you're indoors
  
• #328 - More than two workplaces in one business will cause the additional places to be out of the screen.
  
• #337 - Multi-line error message doesn't fit into red box
  
• #407 - Progress bar not showing proper progress
  
• #642 - "Customers over time" in BizMan showing erroneous graph for yesterday

Coming soon to a Steam client near you!

Alpha 8 will be available exclusively to our Gold supporters. You can order the Gold package of Big Ambitions at https://www.bigambitionsgame.com to get immediate access.

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That's all for today. We'll be back in 2 weeks with further updates. Don't forget to add Big Ambitions to your wishlist!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1331550/Big_Ambitions/

All the best,
Jonas#1 & Daniel#2

[Animation] Fixed death animations

[Audio] Improved the faction button click SFX

[Optimization] Improved the loading time when selecting a faction
[Optimization] Improved mission loading performances
[Optimization] Improved in-game performances
[Optimization] Improved execution phase loading time

Hello everyone, monthly update news here!

Development is still in progress and new enemies and features are coming in the next update.

Say hello to our new friend!!!


(W.I.P.)

The "Drone" companion (not final name btw) will help you hunt every cube you will encounter (except friendly of course, yes there will be friendly cubes in the future).
Now you can also buy supplies and upgrades at the new vending machine using your xp points.

And of course the new enemies:


(Also W.I.P)

The very first "Boss" of the game, armed with 2 cannons and with a lot of health is very angry at you for a yet unknown reason, and his little friend, the little cube in front of him is a new type of enemy and it will come with many more little friends just to annoy the player ("very lovely" indeed)


Other small changes:
The text of the "Fullscreen" option has been corrected from "fulscreen" to "fullscreen"

• Solve the mind-bending mystery of this oppressive RPG with bits of survival and horror

https://store.steampowered.com/app/615690/Inferno/

• Defeat a massive fortress full of crazy murderers in the exciting world of Laxius Force

https://store.steampowered.com/app/644870/Fortress_of_Hell/

• Enjoy Gemelle Games' 4th and final offering so far, following the acclaimed A Timely Intervention and The Tale of a Common Man

https://store.steampowered.com/app/594000/Shadows_and_Lies/

• Travel the skies and find paradise in this epic RPG

https://store.steampowered.com/app/370690/Elendia_Ceus/

• Help a group of friends find their way out of a haunted nightmarish castle

https://store.steampowered.com/app/615700/A_Plunge_into_Darkness/

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More awesome games to play on Aldorlea's website, including Indinera's 50-hour epic Forever Heroes and his latest release Night of the Stars! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

💖 https://www.aldorlea.org/foreverheroes.php

✨ https://www.aldorlea.org/nightofthestars.php



Have fun! 😎