It's go-time, Renegades! At last, it’s time to redeem your one-way ticket to the “Prime Dimension”. Things are likely to get brutal in the epicentre of the Imperium. Are you prepared to take on brand new opponents in a brand new dimension? Prepare. For. CHAOS.



A New Dimension: Take the fight right to the heart of the tyrannical regime by invading their home turf. It won't be easy, but you can finally put an end to the multidimensional menace that calls itself The Imperium!

New Opponents: New Behemoths arrive on the scene! They’re far more powerful than any opponent you have faced so far - so powerful that you'll get a sixth hero(!!!) to fight them with! That’s right, it’s PRIME TIME, baby!

Recruitable Progeny: Finally, you’ll be able to recruit Progeny / Hero Variants mid-run (presuming you’ve unlocked them, of course!)

A New Ending: With the incursion into the Prime Dimension comes the climax of the Star Renegades' trials. After everything your squad’s have been through, witness the end of the Imperium's machinations and experience the finale of the story.

A New Renegade: The Dark Paragon - Recruit a potent new damage dealer who can steal health from your foes (with the aid of an alien parasite) and change forms in the middle of battle!



DOWNLOAD THE FREE PRIME DIMENSION EXPANSION HERE:https://store.steampowered.com/app/1763340?snr=1_5_9_

Match improvements:

- New 3D full screen mode in the match, with stadium view and different perspectives (hint for switching: SPACE pauses the match)
- Alternative text mode for 3D match display
- New scene descriptions in the match, throw-ins are reactivated
- New texts for injury time

Other improvements:

- Manager working time and stress completely revised, explanation about the effects of parties and sports added
- When reaching manager level 15, a certificate can be printed out under Personal
- Psychological report is now available for one week in the menu
- Options.bin problem fixed
- Crash at the end of the season when signing players without contracts fixed
- Fixed a bug in the stadium editor when displaying the roofs, scoreboard is positioned correctly again
- International derbies were added to the database (e.g. England, Italy, France)
- New photos for various female players in the Bundesliga DLC





Match-Verbesserungen:

- Neuer 3D-Vollbild-Modus im Match, mit Stadionansicht und verschiedenen Perspektiven (Tipp zum Umschalten: SPACE pausiert das Match)
- Alternativer Textmodus zur 3D-Matchdarstellung
- Neue Szenenbeschreibungen im Match, Einwürfe sind reaktiviert
- Neue Texte für die Nachspielzeit

Sonstige Verbesserungen:

- Manager-Arbeitszeit und Stress komplett überarbeitet, Erklärung über die Auswirkungen von Partys und Sport ergänzt
- Beim Erreichen von Managerstufe 15 kann unter Persönliches eine Urkunde ausgedruckt werden
- Psychologischer Bericht ist jetzt noch eine Woche im Menü verfügbar
- Options.bin - Problem beseitigt
- Absturz am Saisonende bei Verpflichtung vertragsloser Spieler beseitigt
- Fehler im Stadioneditor bei der Darstellung der Dächer beseitigt, Anzeigetafel wird wieder korrekt positioniert
- Auch Internationale Derbys eingetragen (u.a. England, Italien, Frankreich)
- Foto-Ergänzungen bei den Spielerinnen im Bundesliga-DLC

VER.1.8.3 Now Available!!!
Bugs fixed

The end of the year is nigh, and that means we're at the final Gielinor Gazette of 2021! And just like last year, today we're showcasing a look ahead to 2022! So grab your festive brew, stick on your ugliest Christmas jumper and let's get stuck in!

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It’s been an interesting year for the world and Old School RuneScape, which has now hit the ripe old age of eight! It seems crazy to think we'll soon be ten years old.

Among a variety of smaller updates and QoL improvements, including those from Poll 74 & 75, we've released a variety of content this year! Ranging from new quests in both Misthalin and Kourend (such as the epic A Kingdom Divided) to new challenges for some of the most popular PvM content, with two new modes for Theatre of Blood and the return of Phosani’s Nightmare.

The team also released a brand new skilling boss, the mighty Tempoross! And, after a long wait, we saw the release of the Clan System and later, Group Ironman. We even released a new C++ client on Steam which comes bundled with a plethora of handy improvements like increased draw distance, XP trackers and more - much of which we’ve recently tested on mobile with the Android Beta.

With everyone longing for the next RuneFest, we also held our very first Summer Summit - a show jam-packed full of updates on some of the biggest content coming to the game.

Nex is arriving on January 5th and if you haven't already seen it, we recently dropped a teaser trailer showcasing the arrival of the fearsome fifth general! We hope you enjoy taking on the newest edition of the God Wars Dungeon when she arrives. For those players who have completed Desert Treasure, you should keep an eye out for when you first return to Gielinor.

With the rewards being designed and implemented, Leagues III is now officially ready for release on January 19th! We are super excited and will be sharing some more about Shattered Relics over the next month, so stay tuned!

That being said, we know many of you feel that there’s not been as much content for YOU this year, and we understand why. While 2021 saw some fantastic, and quite frankly long-overdue system improvements, they took up a large portion of the development time that we'd usually spend on creating new playable content. This is something we'd like to avoid in 2022 - having a healthy balance between game improvements and adding new content is one of the main driving forces that shaped next year’s roadmap.

To support our new roadmap, we've made some changes to how the team operates. Previously, the development team were split into five groups (excluding Art, QA, etc.), with each team having various projects assigned to them. The key problem with this approach is that with projects being distributed amongst teams, each was focused on its work specifically and few people were looking at the game as a whole.

Instead, the teams have been split from groups of 4-5 people to teams of 2-3, each of which will focus on a particular area of the game. This will allow the projects they undertake to have a purpose beyond the scope of just a singular goal. We’ve now got developers working on most core areas of the games, which should result in a wide variety of content that caters to different types of players over the year.

As with any change, it'll take some time to adjust, but the team is genuinely excited, and we hope you are too! We'll continue being flexible with our roadmap, as is the norm when it comes to planning, but we're hopeful this new dynamic will give us a more stable base going into 2022 and beyond.

Now, onto the roadmap… let's have look at some of the core projects we'll be working on in the first half of 2022!



Unlike the previous roadmap, which split the content into two main sections, 2022’s version focuses mainly on our teams. Each coloured section (or row of blocks) are projects assigned to specific teams. The top row of blocks showcases what would be considered the 'Big Beats' for each month, and consists of the following:

• January: Nex and Leagues III
  
• February: Land of the Goblins
  
• March: Guardians of Gielinor and Community Event Support
  
• April: Beneath Cursed Sands and Easter Event
  
• May: PvP Arena (Duel Arena Replacement)
  
• June: Skilling Update and Wilderness Boss Rework

Some of these projects we’ve already spoken about and some (like Nex and Leagues III) are just around the corner. Get comfy and have a read back through some of our previous newsposts for more information about those!

Land of the Goblins, the next instalment in the Cave Goblin questline, is not too far away either. We're aiming for a February release, with a blog coming out in the next few weeks containing quest details. It might seem like it’s come out of nowhere, but for those of you not in the know, the original Land of the Goblins quest came out in 2007, just after the backup Old School is built upon. After poking around in the files, we discovered that the majority of the work for this quest is already done! All that remains is to add a few missing parts and some tweaks to make it suitably Old School. After this (pending it passing a poll, of course!), we can finally continue Zanik's story!





You might have previously seen the ideation pitch for Guardians of Gielinor in last year's December Gazette. In short, it’s a fun and interactive way of training Runecraft that fits alongside the existing methods, while also offering a different way of training the skill. We’ve seen many players asking for a new way to train Runecraft, and we think this could be the answer.

The Community Event Support involves mostly behind-the-scenes changes to help create more community-driven events, though we'll also be looking into changes that will benefit everyone! Afterwards, this team will shift their focus towards providing a better experience for several skills with the Skilling Update.

We'll be dedicating one of the newly created teams to examining the experience of new players when they first step foot in Gielinor. We're not looking to make drastic sweeping changes here, but it's important we pay attention to new adventurers if the game is to continue to grow.

Alongside all of this, we’ll also be continuing with our steady stream of QoL improvements, with Poll 76 coming to you via a blog in early 2022!

Wondering what that big yellow box is in the middle? Well, that’s pointing towards our new ideation approach, something that Mod Ed will be talking about later.

In regards to Tombs of Amascut and the Wilderness Boss Rework, we want to give you an explanation of their placement on the roadmap, which we appreciate is a little later in the year than expected.

Tombs of Amascut is our third raid, and we're really looking to go BIG! It's our largest-scale raid to date and we know how important it is that we get this right, so we want to spend more time making sure it's is up to the standard you'd expect from a raid - especially since we're trying something new. Before the end of this year, we hope to share more information about Old School's third raid and the next quest in the Desert storyline.

Beneath Cursed Sands will lay the foundation for the events of Tombs of Amascut, but we want to stress that it's a project in its own right. You can look forward to playing it in April.

With the new team structure, we now have dedicated resources to focus on PvP and similar activities. We know that PvP has been an underserved segment of our community in recent years - we don't want that to be the same for 2022. With the Duel Arena removal happening imminently, the initial focus of this team will be on its replacement, the PvP Arena. Following this, the team will then move on to the Wilderness Boss Rework.

We also know many of you want to see Bounty Hunter return. We hear you loud and clear, and as such, we're hoping to deliver in the second half of 2022! We still have a lot of work to do with a design that prevents abuse like previous iterations - it may well be that we cannot achieve this without making drastic changes. Never fear - we'll keep you updated with our progress.

As for PvP, we want to take a moment to apologise to those of you who were looking forward to these upcoming changes, especially the Wilderness Boss rework. This is a project we've delayed multiple times now, so we understand the scepticism around this ever happening. We're confident that with our new team structure, and a team dedicated to delivering these projects, we'll be able to deliver a quality update for you all to enjoy.

That's all we can say about the roadmap for now, but 2022 already looks to be a great year for Old School - and this roadmap only covers the first half!

We’ll be looking to shed more light on what's still to come later in the year. With the success of our Summer Summit, we want to run similar events, even bigger and better! In fact, this time we’re aiming to have two - one in the spring and one in the autumn. Expect more details about upcoming content and some big yet-to-be-seen reveals - all delivered by the teams directly working on those projects! We've got some exciting things we're working on outside of this roadmap, too, so stay tuned for more information in the near future.

Old School wouldn’t exist without your continued support and love for the game. We love making content that you enjoy, and your passion continues to drive us. So thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.

We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, and we can’t wait to have you onboard for the journey!

---

by Mod Ed





We have some exciting new plans for our ideation process throughout 2022. However, if you've not read some of our previous Gazettes, you might not actually know what ideation is. So let us explain!

Ideation is a process that has existed for two years now, and the format has changed little in that time. Every four weeks, each member of the Old School team (including those in non-development roles) has the opportunity to take two ideation days. For these two days, the team has a chance to focus on coming up with ideas for potential future Old School RuneScape updates, without the distraction of their normal work duties. These ideation sessions alternate between having a set theme to follow, and open ideation where anything goes.

Ideation is designed to be as flexible as possible. Some people choose to work on ideas alone, while others form teams (often with people they wouldn't normally get to work with). Some ideas come in the form of a document or presentation, but others may get an actual working prototype.

Regardless of what is produced during ideation, people have a chance to pitch their ideas to the wider team in regular pitch sessions. In these, the team provides feedback and guidance to help ensure each idea is the best it can be. After that, the creators of a pitch have a few options. They may choose to discard their idea, deciding that it wasn't meant to be. Alternatively, they may decide to do further work on it in a future ideation session to address feedback. The last option is to submit the idea for the backlog, in which case it is reviewed by a small group to ensure it's appropriate.

Over the past two years, many projects released into the game have come from the ideation backlog. For anyone interested, here's some of the most notable:

• Leagues I: Twisted League
  
• The Nightmare of Ashihama
  
• Darkmeyer
  
• Hallowed Sepulchre
  
• Costume Room Rework
  
• Getting Ahead
  
• Soul Wars
  
• TzHaar-Ket-Rak's Challenges
  
• Shooting Stars
  
• Below Ice Mountain
  
• Theatre of Blood: Hard Mode
  
• Phosani's Nightmare
  
• Halloween 2021
  
• Nex (upcoming)
  
• Land of the Goblins (upcoming)
  
• Guardians of Gielinor (upcoming)
  
• The Tombs of Amascut (upcoming)

Before we go over the changes coming to ideation in 2022, let's have a look at some recent pitches. While we'd love to hear your feedback on these ideas, do be aware that ideas are all they are at this stage. None of these pitches have been approved for development, so it may be a long time (if ever) before they actually make it into the game. There's four pitches to look through in this section, and Mod Oasis has a deep dive into a fifth pitch later in the Gazette.


Fairytale III - Among Thieves

In this Master level finale to the Fairytale trilogy, you must help the Fairy Resistance deal with the Fairy Godfather once and for all. To do so, the Fairy Queen tasks you with performing a daring heist to steal the Fairy Nexus, a powerful device that is key to the Fairy Godfather's plans. To have any hope of success, you must gather a band of the finest (or not so finest) thieves around. Alongside the usual XP and Quest Point rewards, completing the quest will unlock new Fairy Rings and an update to the Magic Secateurs.


Guild of Shadows

Back in 2018, we spoke about our amazing new Advanced Warfare skill. Hopefully you've realised by now that it was in fact just an April Fools joke. However, beyond the Tactical Nukes and Australianisers, it seems we may have accidentally designed something with real potential. That's where the Guild of Shadows comes in. This is a new guild for the Thieving skill, and it focuses on completing various Thieving-based contracts. For example, you might be asked to infiltrate an area to destroy some supplies or to plant an incriminating document on an unsuspecting character. Completing contracts will earn reputation within the guild, which can of course be exchanged for XP and other rewards.


Tourist Attraction

Hadley the Tourist Guide wants some help in setting up some new adventurous activities to attract new visitors to Kandarin. Once these have been set up, they can be used as new training methods in various skills. For example, the rock climbing activity requires you to make a rock climbing wall near Baxtorian Falls. Once built, you can use the climbing wall to earn Agility and Strength XP. Just make sure you choose the most optimal route, or you'll run out of energy and have to start over again.


Solphus

Solphus is a tortoise skilling boss designed for 1-3 players. The fight with Solphus is split into two phases. The first is all about preparation, requiring you to use you Hunter and Woodcutting skills to gather the supplies you need to defeat the boss. Once you have what you need, you can begin the actual fight, where you must use your Farming and Construction skills to build traps. By luring the boss onto these traps, you'll be able to do enough damage to defeat it. But of course, you'll need to ensure it doesn't defeat your group first! Beating the boss will offer the chance of grabbing new rewards, including new Ranged ammo, new Farming equipment, and of course, a new pet.



As you can see, the past two years of ideation have delivered some amazing pitches, many of which have made it into the game for you all to enjoy. Still, despite the successes, ideation has some problems, which we're hoping our 2022 plans will solve.

As mentioned above, ideation should be about coming up with new pitches without the distraction of normal work duties. While great in theory, this is something that has rarely worked in reality. Removing distractions for two full days every four weeks has proved problematic for many reasons, especially when you consider that we update our game every week. As such, we find that many team members are unable to find the time for ideation, despite wanting to take part.

Finding time isn't the only problem the team has faced. While many great updates have come from the ideation backlog, there are many more great ideas that have languished there. The unfortunate reality is that our release schedule does not have enough room for many of the great ideas that ideation has produced.

To address these issues, 2022 will see the end of our current ideation schedule. Rather than two days every four weeks, we're going to run week long game jams every three months. For these weeks, there will be no game update, no blog releases and all but the most critical meetings will be cancelled. This will give the team a whole week free of distractions to come up with the best ideas possible. Having a full week will also mean that the ideas produced will be far more fleshed out, making it much easier for them to make it into the release schedule.

Our trial of this new approach will happen in March. We'll let you know exactly when closer to the time. If the trial is successful, we'll look to run further game jams in June, September and December.

One thing we're super keen on is bringing you all along for the game jam ride. You can expect plenty of social content you can get involved with - we want your early feedback and suggestions! We'll also have a dedicated section in the Gazette after each game jam where we'll preview everything that was produced.

That's all on our new ideation approach for now. As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

---

by Mod Oasis



Before we dive into A Heated Showdown, do be aware that this is just an ideation pitch. As such, there is no guarantee this idea will ever make it into the game.

Going into ideation this time round, we had a plan. Not one we stuck to... but a plan nonetheless!

Last year, we released the quest 'Getting Ahead', a short one-off story based in Kourend that we referred to as a 'Twisted Tale'. Our original goal for this ideation was to design and create a number of Tales to help fill out Kourend and Kebos with more stories, characters and points of interest that players would recognise and remember. So that's exactly what we did! We have this great online whiteboard tool that makes collaboration really easy, which is vital when working from home. We took screenshots all over Kourend and Kebos, marking out areas of interest with little red question marks. We were mainly looking for locations that artists have mapped down, but have nothing specific tied to them in-game. This allows us as designers to build fitting stories that are inspired by the areas themselves.





The great thing about ideation is that inspiration can come from anywhere. Ideating in a group means you can bounce ideas off each other, finding what works and what doesn't, challenging the bias in our ideas, and really drilling down into something that hopefully becomes a great addition to the game.

Two of the quest ideas even came from outside Old School. The first, from playing the beginning of Dark Chronicle, was of a travelling animal show, where the players needed to run around Kourend, trapping the animals and returning them to their ship wrecked traveling Zoo! There was also the idea of a shoot out, the inspiration for which... I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure where this came from. It might have been a meme of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly? It hit me that we've never really explored the Western genre in Old School, a game that's filled with tropes from various media, and now would be a great chance to do so!



So, you want to make a Western-themed quest. Where do you go from there? With the release of Tombs of Amascut next year, we decided it would be best to move the quest over to the desert - it's a great chance to show some love to the content drought-ridden area and add some more life.




The quest then went through a lot of iteration, with a bunch of questions we needed to answer:

• Where should it start?
  
• Should there be any requirements?
  
• What existing locations and characters can we leverage?
  
• What kind of rewards will it have?

These aren't questions you set in stone at the very start, but things we consider throughout the design phase. For example, a project that reuses existing assets and locations requires a smaller art budget, which in turn means that as long as we've got the dev time to actually implement it, the chances that it will make it into the game are higher!

We chose Nardah as the starting point for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it fits the Western theme perfectly! We could picture the tumbleweed rolling across the road as the player walks into a deserted town. Secondly, there's already some narrative we can build from. By using the Spirits of the Elid, where the player restores water to the town, we've already had a starting point - a town that was run down but is now beginning to heal and repair. This leaves it ripe for some evildoers to come in and ruin the whole thing!

Once we had a location and the start of a story, we split into two teams, one of which worked on a prototype of the puzzle. Our aim was to capture the cinematic Wild West shoot out experience, where the hero's taking out bandits and saving the town. But the hard part? Translating the idea into fun and memorable gameplay that fits within the Runescape world. We wanted to break away from standard Runescape combat, even though it's quite a scary thought.

Essentially, the mini-game uses round-based combat. The player chooses their and their partner's actions - be it shoot, move, hide or eat. Then you click 'Go' and everything happens at once, meaning you'd need to predict what the bandits were going to do and plan your actions accordingly. It's quite a step away from anything we've done in Old School, and requires much testing and prototyping to really nail down the mechanics.



We also wanted to make a new weapon that was a better fit for the quest than a Crossbow. 'Tourist Trap' introduces the Desert Mining Camp, which handily comes with a bunch of evil bandits who capture people to use as slaves. Plus, at the end of the quest you gain access to a new dart technology. We could expand on this by using darts as ammunition in a new weapon. One idea we had for this weapon was that it could only be shot a few times, after which the player would need to manually reload it in their Backpack. An alternative was that it shoots solely through special attack, meaning if you run out of special you need to wait for it to recharge before you can shoot again (the special essentially becomes the reload mechanic).



The design for 'A Heated Showdown' has been finished and pitched to the rest of the team. As explained above, the ideation process is undergoing some changes next year to allow us developers more time to prototype and test our ideas. We're going to make some tweaks and changes, especially to the reward weapon (to ensure it has its niche within Old School). It will then be sent off to a more formalised review, in which some of the leads will look at the quest and the roadmap over the next few years and decide where it could fit in. We can't guarantee this quest will go into the game, but it's been great to share our ideation process with the community.

Thanks for reading my ramblings about a Western-style shootout in the desert! I hope it was insightful, and even stirs some creativity in you! As designers, we rarely have perfectly laid out plans, but doing some exploration can lead to some great results. Inspiration can really come from anywhere!

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Unfortunately due to the character limit within Steam announcements we've had to remove the Postbag and Hedge from the Steam version of the Gazette. However, you can find them all by checking out the December 2021 Edition over on our official Old School news site.

---

That's everything for the return of the Gielinor Gazette. We'd love to hear your feedback on the newest edition and as with everything else, if you’ve got any ideas about the sorts of things you’d like to see in upcoming editions of the Gielinor Gazette, then please do let us know via our official forums, on the 2007Scape Reddit, the Steam forums or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel.

Mods Arcane, Archie, Argo, Ash, Ayiza, Banjo, Boko, Brow, Bruno, Con, Curse, Daizong, Deagle, Dibber, Ditto, Dylan, Ed, Elena, Ellie, Errol, Fed, Gecko, Grub, Halo, Havik, Hornet, Husky, Jndr, John C, Kandosii, Katies, Kieren, Kirby, KT, Kurotou, Lenny, Light, Lottie, Mack, Matheus, Maylea, Markos, Meat, Morty, Nasty, Nin, Nylu, Oasis, Peppers, Regent, Redfield, Roq, Ry, Sarnie, Sigma, Skylark, Sova, Squid, SteveW, Tide, Veda, Vegard, West, Wolfy & Zuko

The Old School Team

Alright, Renegades it's go-time! We've got you a one-way ticket to the so-called “Prime Dimension” -- the epicenter of the Imperium and the source of their invasions. Who knows what you’ll face on the other side, but I’ve got a feeling it ain’t going to go down without a fight. So, what are you waiting for, grub-worms?!? Gear up, lock and load, and tell J5 to tuck away his marshmallow kit because things are about to get serious!


As a special gift to you legacy players, we've got a new batch of content specifically for those of you who have beaten the game a bunch of times! In addition, there's also a long-requested feature: being able to recruit Progeny mid-run.

NOTE: There are a few instances of dialogue within the 1.5 content from the heroes, but you won't see them if you have "Suppress Idle Banter" option enabled. The content works fine without them chiming in, of course, but you may wish to disable that option when pursuing the 1.5 content for the first time.

Improvements & Fixes
• New secret ending specifically for legacy players!
• This includes new music as well!
• Finish the game with a squad made up ENTIRELY of heroes whose overseer counterparts have been defeated, and you'll have the chance to enter the Imperium home dimension and bring the fight to them!
• By successfully defeating the Imperium in their home dimension, you'll unlock a special hero: the Dark Paragon
• For this purpose, you'll notice new insignias on the Squad Selection Screen and recruitment screens indicating who has and hasn't had their overseer counterpart defeated.
• To do this, you first need to help Professor Zurek decode a mysterious new Imperium Dimension transmission by securing Imperium cryptography devices. To find out more, you'll just need to play!
• Also, mid-run hero recruitment has been opened up to progeny as well!
• Fixed Marksman/Spectre Camaraderie Dialogue (was triggering Gunslinger/Spectre dialogue).
• Added a catch to fix a rare issue where the moon teleporter wouldn't deactivate upon re-entering main map.
• One of the Dagan Factory dungeons had interactables floating above the floor. That's now fixed.
• Squad selection panel is now wider to accommodate extra hero.

Bug Reporting
If you are running into issues, you can submit a bug report here:
www.rawfury.com/support

Extra things that will help us fix these pesky bugs:
- Screenshots
- Detailed step by step instructions on how to reproduce the bug
- Your save files (PC only) using CTRL-F12 before or at the moment the bug has occurred. Doing so will create a folder on your desktop called "SR_Bug_Report" that contains your save files and output logs which we can then use to debug the issue.


Thanks for your support!
- The Massive Damage Team

Dear animal-freakshow-lovers,

THIS IT IT! Two years of highs and downs, hundreds of bugs fixed, thousands of iterations, endless lines of code, and now we can proudly say that by far our biggest and most ambitious game,


For this event, we prepared a small gift for you with a 15% discount on the game!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1390700/The_Crackpet_Show/



It’s not the end, it’s a completely new chapter! And now you can jump on board and help us to shape the game before the final release. Take a look at all the stuff that’s coming in the following weeks and months!



There is one more surprise coming in the following days, so stick around with us to not miss it!

You can keep up with all news on The Crackpet Show by visiting the official website or following Vixa Games on Twitter, YouTube, and joining the Discord server.

Update size: 21.5 MB

We hope you'll have a happy holiday and a nice winter vacation. We bring some small fixes to yesterday's release. We are fixing some issues with the new achievements that did not trigger as intended.

We are also making a temporary fix to an exploit found with the new perk deck. You should no longer be able to keep reviving yourself indefinitely. We are still working on further tweaks to be released at a later date.

Changes

• Made a temporary fix for an exploit with the new perk deck, where players could use leech to revive themselves indefinitely
  
• Fixed an issue with the Bloody Grinch achievement where the elevator escape, on the Breakin' Feds heist, would cause the achievement to fail
  
• Fixed an issue with the Gift Giver achievement where the achievement did not track correctly
  
• Fixed an issue where some doors on the Counterfeit heist were unopenable
  
• Fixed an issue where players could use the outfits from the Winter Ghost Tailor Pack without owning the DLC
  
• Fixed a visual issue where the icon for the Redberry Black weapon color did not match the look of the weapon color
  
• Added missing icons for Snowballs and Leech Ampule when playing in VR

Keep those helmets flying.
OVERKILL_Tobias
OVERKILL - a Starbreeze Studio.

Maharaja is a new edition of the classic game by the authors Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling. In this new version of the game which now supports 1 to 4 players and is enriched with new graphics and components, you build statues of your God of reference to please the Maharaja during their visit and score victory points at the end of the game depending on the majority you reach.


During the game, players take the role of priests who travel to different cities in India, building statues and shrines dedicated to their favorite Gods to expand their worship. To do so, they are assisted by several characters with different abilities. Every year, the Maharaja, the great king of India, will change his residence and players will receive rewards according to their Gods' worship value. At the beginning of each year, players plan their actions in a secret phase to be played simultaneously.


At the end of the seventh year or when a player builds their seventh statue, the game ends, then the player with most prestige wins.

Hey youtubers,

Want to take advantage of the best events from NewTube City to grow your channel? We've prepared this brief guide to show you some of the most interesting ones over an entire year in the City.

Check out the video guide and read on to know what exclusive trends you can catch out there!



First of all, catch up on the trends of the day. If there's any relevant event happening in the city, your drone could warn you, a new special trend could appear on your mobile app, or a relevant post will show you relevant information on your InstaLife's feed. If you notice any of that, it's time to dive into the city to create your special content for your channel, thus gaining new subscribers and reaching the top of the ranking!



Here are the best city events and their trends you will encounter in your life as youtuber:

Celebrate the day of love with romantic content for your channel and get the exclusive Valentine's Day chocolate for your beloved partner! To get this rare trend, you will need to visit a themed booth at any of these three locations:

• Center: close to the Big Arc near the Subway
  
• Port: Seaside Venue
  
• City Hall: City Hall Plaza

Starting Spring 15 and progressively on random days after that, you may find a particular developer at Player One, who's presenting a new video game before its official launch, giving you the opportunity to try it out and stream it live for your fans! Don't lose the chance to take the collaboration and get this special trend to boost your channel.




Easter is one of the Mayoress' favorite celebrations of the year, and so she organizes a game where you will need to find three Easter Eggs dispersed throughout the city to claim the exclusive Easter Day prize. If you find them all and tell the Mayoress, you will earn the large egg basket that you can use to decor your place or capture the themed trend to boost your next video. The places where you can find each Easter egg are random, but there will be at least one in each neighborhood, so keep an eye on each corner to pick them up.




The biggest gaming event of the year takes place from 22 to 26 Spring, and various activities are going on around it, just like the console conference #MantendoConference, or the special Mayamoto's quest to get the rare #PiranhaPlant, or the inauguration event with the #StartThePlayCon trend. Choose your preferred one (or catch'em all) and keep growing your channel!




Besides the list of the top trends from your mobile, you will notice some important news on your InstaLife's feed as well, announcing trending events and other interesting stories. On random days, you will see that a famous youtuber has appeared in the city, so don't lose your chance to find them and record an exclusive video for your channel! You will obtain a premium trend that will boost your content once you publish it to your channel.

Here are some localizations where you can spot this event:

• Center: close to the Fountain, close to Spicy Ren, or near the Big Arc next to the Subway
  
• Port: Beach, seaside venue, or close to the Yacht
  
• City Hall: City Hall Plaza, Train Station, or near the Theater

Once every two weeks on random days, you can join the Dancing Challenge at the beach, close to the Calypso Bar in the Port, to have a lot of fun with other citizens and have the chance to capture this special trend with your Drone. Take photos and record videos to publish one of the most energetic content! So, what do you say, wanna dance?




There's also a special day in the city dedicated to the scariest season of the year. Find themed decorations, and disguised citizens all around the place to get the unique trend of this day. You can also buy the pumpkin in the exclusive booth at three different locations:

• Center: close to the big Arc near the Subway
  
• Port: Seaside Venue
  
• City Hall: City Hall Plaza

There are gaming tournaments every Sunday at the AFK Bar in the Center, and sometimes even famous youtubers play at it. Here you can also participate and play in the competition, stream live to win one of the top trends of the day, or eat to refill some energy. Suzy, the Queen of the Tournament, has beaten the best gamers in the city so, if you unlock her heart quest, you may challenge her to become the new master of the event, or you can just record the match to get the trend and engage your followers with fresh content.




Enjoy the jolliest season of the year and get new special trends by streaming close to the big Christmas Tree of the embellished City Hall Plaza: #ChristmasTree and #Christmas, both with a high rarity that will boost your upcoming content. You will also get a cute Christmas Tree to decor your home and have access to the trend at any time.




The greatest event of all NewTube City to decide the best youtuber happens every 28 of each season, allowing you to finally prove your fantastic talent to the world and be rewarded for it! If you start this day as the #1 youtuber in the NewTube ranking, you can even join the ceremony and win the ultimate award. Otherwise, you can keep enjoying your way as an emerging youtuber, capture the #NewTubeCeremony trend, and keep growing your channel for the next season.




We hope that these tips help you improve your gaming experience and make your content even better for your fans. We encourage you to visit our Steam discussions or participate in our Discord server to know even more.

Stay tuned!

When you look at the huge amount of work that has been accomplished in two and a half years, you would not believe that this was possible at the first place. But the point is that nothing happens right away - the creation of the game world, like any other complex aspect, is a long road of small steps.
So, today we will tell you about how the style and visual language of Torn Away locations were formed.
It all started with the first mood sketches. Even when the script and storylines weren't ready yet, we tried to find what kind of mood we wanted to convey.



The purpose of the thumbnail sketch is to establish composition and tone relationships at the level of several spots. For some locations, we made such a sketch right in 3d space using the grease pencil tool right in Blender. This allows us not only to establish tonal relationships and composition, but also to immediately understand how the parallax of our sprites will work.



In the process of searching, the graphic style of the game developed and changed beyond recognition. This happened for several reasons - for example, testing technologies: for our art director, it was important that the solutions conceived in graphic editors could be implemented in the engine.
Character design also influenced the overall style. If at first it was cute and stylized, as we went on we came to more realistic proportions, leaving a certain amount of convention. This was necessary for the design to work well in conjunction with the content of the story and the emotion that we want to convey. The overall minimalism of the presentation was necessary so that the project, in principle, was feasible for our small team. We didn't have a huge budget like Ori, where each sprite was drawn for a long time and painstakingly by experienced artisans. Therefore, we chose such a presentation, where we could put together effective working compositions from simple fills and texture strokes without wasting a lot of time.

A clear evolution of style.






And more steps.



When the main style is set, an understandable, but at the same time no less difficult part of the work remains - thinking over each location and then gradually working out the graphics. The process for everyone is about the same - general sketching, blocking, object concepts - working out 2D and 3D assets, drawing textures and then final assembly of the level in the editor.








Even though Torn Away is a war game, we didn't want our scenes to feel drab and dark. Firstly, our heroine Asya is a child, and we wanted to show that even in the most terrible conditions, children do not lose their special view of the world. And secondly, the contrast allows us to evoke the most vivid emotions in the player.




Below is the process of working on the forest level.







Now this level looks like this.





In addition to visual expressiveness, it was also very important for us to maintain historical accuracy. Yes, of course, we stylize images from references, but knowledgeable people will be able to find out what was the source of inspiration for this or that object.
The location of the German city that Asya wanders into has become one of the most difficult for us. We did not take any particular city as a basis, but tried to convey the spirit of small German towns of that period.





You can see several propaganda posters here. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that we did not use real Nazi symbols. Some countries have laws that prohibit the use of such symbols even in historical works of art. We decided that it is more important for us to convey the spirit of that time than to portray real posters.



It was much easier for us to work on Soviet interiors. Since we ourselves are from Russia, we know where and how to find the necessary materials. There are many museums dedicated to this period that carefully collect items from the early and mid-20th centuries. Among other things, we know and love Soviet films, which also have enough historically correct sets.
It's always a pleasure to look to your country's culture for inspiration.





Looking at archival materials and footage from old films, it is difficult to imagine that Asya's room could look like this - bright and cheerful. As if there is no and will not be any war.



Thank you for delving into this trip down our development ‘memory’ road with us. We have oh so much in store for you, so please, let us know your thoughts and stay tuned!