Beta 0.109
Significant optimizations.
Low general quality settings are now much lower. Medium is now closer to what older low was in terms of performance.
Greatly improved loading screen times when Interior Reflections are set to higher quality levels.
Wormholes will now sound a continuous alarm if they were not immediately cleaned up by a Base Defender. (Thanks audi0C0aster1!)
Added a way to build a block on the side of the block you are standing on by shooting a holographic rectangle. (Thanks audi0C0aster1!)
Reduced the cost of most high level mods, powers, and fabricators.
Fixed an issue where the sky will flicker black when Depth of Field is on (Thanks exclavon and audi0C0aster1!)
Unlock mods now have much simpler secondary effects.
Added a cube outline to make it clearer where the build mod will place an object.
Trying a new optimization that should significantly improve performance in very large bases (Thanks Cyrious!)
Swap and Multi mods should now center correctly when using Build mods.
Destructible objects no longer catch fire under certain conditions.
Improved description for uneven Spread mods. (Thanks Unis!)
Vats will now correctly change color when filled. (Thanks audi0c0aster1!)
Packager lines are much more visible.
Disabled challenge maps for now.
Fixed a bug where packagers would claim to be able to reach a block they couldn't.
Reduced incidence of fires from ball wreckage.
Jade fabricators no longer require an impossible to acquire resource. (Oops)
Ported force shockwave visual effects to new engine.
Several miscellaneous bugfixes and improvements.

Hi everybody!

Rahanare has started a speedrun.com branch for Owlone in the Woods:
https://www.speedrun.com/owlone_in_the_woods/run/y9l3pjvy
He has also set a new world record for any% at 14:56.81 !

Congratulations Rahanare!

Kasper

Monomi Park is proud to announce we have officially sold more than 5 million copies of Slime Rancher! Thank you all who have set out to explore the Far, Far Range on PC, Xbox, Playstation, and most recently on the Nintendo Switch.

We’re still amazed by the amount of support and love Slime Rancher continues to receive. As a show of gratitude, we will be running a sale of Slime Rancher at 70% off the game, 30% off the DLC, and 20% off the OSTs to celebrate this milestone on Steam!

This is a rare achievement for a video game, and an absolute dream come true for a small indie studio. And we can’t wait to continue the adventures of Beatrix LeBeau in Slime Rancher 2, so keep your eyes peeled for more news and information on our upcoming game scheduled for release later this year!

The Founder’s Pack is no longer available for purchase. We were honestly blown away by the amount of support that you guys showed and can’t thank those of you who purchased the Founder's Pack enough! We are so grateful to have such an amazing community so early into the story of Gridiron and we’re more excited for the future than ever.

To thank Goated Founders in particular, we rented an asteroid engraver from the Synths. It was very expensive. Players can now see asteroids with the names of Goated Founders engraved on them drift past the bay of the Moon Stadium!







Fixed an issue where players’ levels would not be displayed properly on the end match screen.

⨭ Added

1. The hall of ordeals added. You can enter there anytime. It is on section A. This is basically a difficulty test. You can choose to fight things. Each opponents will require a different strategy to beat. If you can beat it, a reward will be given. If you lose, nothing. You can try later.
In this patch, there is only one opponent: Sentry drone MK I.
More will be added later.

2. A story quest “An abandoned lab” added.

3. A pawn shop, Devil's advocate, added with a new unique character, Mike. I actually meant to add this place lot sooner but completely forgot about it. You can sell things there, and it will be a place for several quests.

4. Miyuki’s delta-C quest, the truth path can now advance. It should be complete by next patch. The lie path was completed several patches ago FYI.


💘 NSFW stuff

1. The third scene with the hooker Jihae.



↹ Changed

1. A BGM added to the Blackmen hideout.

2. Corrected a visual issue when you fight an encounter where there are drones and humanoids. The drones didn’t feel like they were levitating and were also too large in comparison with humanoids.

3. Further boosted credit drop because, as it turns out, bullets burn a hole in your wallet.

4. You were able to leave Cold haven a bit earlier than you were supposed to, potentially messing up your plot. This wasn’t exactly a bug. I needed to test the grid map and intentionally lowered the bar. But the bar should have been raised back up but it wasn’t. This has been corrected.

5. A tileset issue was preventing story progression. Fixed.

Hello Squaddies,

It’s Jenny here, the Server Licensing Manager at Offworld Industries, with another Server Spotlight. Now you might be asking yourself what exactly is a Server Spotlight, well this is a chance for me to highlight some of the great community run Servers that help provide amazing experience for Squad players from around the world! Hopefully after reading about some of these great servers, you’ll want to check them out for your next game! 

Whether they are old or new, it's always good to highlight the fantastic stuff our established Server Owners are doing every day.




Started with the community in mind, Enclave is a Server that wants to ensure that their players can voice their opinions and be heard! Here player opinions can directly influence gameplay. From the start, the Enclave community has grown through the influence of its members. The server staff welcome all types of players from any background, experienced players, new players, and those all the way throughout that spectrum, giving them a chance to enjoy the game and to be part of the Enclave community.

Link: Discord (URL Link)

Jenny's Notes: I recently visited this server and thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent there. The atmosphere is welcoming and engaging, while the admins continue to support their players within their community. I did join one of the admins’ squad and they clearly explained to their squad what they will be doing and offered support to new players. I highly recommend visiting this server, just to hear Commander Bear's Helicopter speech, which is as fun as it is informative.





With experience over the years in various online gaming communities - the team behind the BaD: Broken as Designed Server have been involved in many great organizations. Wanting to build one that could really last the test of time they built from their collective experiences, apply the good, and create a welcoming space for all.  [BaD]'s primary goal, their only goal really, is to serve as a place for folks to gather, be themselves, and play games.

The team at BaD hope that their name, "Broken as Designed", conveys the nature of their community.  Perhaps a little more relaxed than true "mil-sim" (as an example, they do not have ranks  and all of their members are equal).  Perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek.  Plus, being competitive at heart, they find that  it's always fun winning while having "bad" in their tags.

Link: http://www.brokendiscord.com

Jenny's Notes: I really enjoyed this server, while I was on it the admins jumped into squads supporting new players. Helping the newer players they explained how to use their mics and how to type while in the game. All of the players were very engaged in the game with admins and experienced members from this community working alongside new players. I highly recommend visiting this server.





Created in Jun 2019, this community was started by two friends who had very quickly grown to love the game of Squad!

The pair met many new people through playing the game and their time in Squad  reached a point where it became more than just friends playing together and morphed into a tight knit community that aims to attract players with a compelling playstyle, camaraderie, and the server community’s ability to play the game in a serious manner while also having fun. Before the friends knew it, they had gained enough members to warrant giving their community a name! Wanting to honour the US 8th Infantry Division ‘Pathfinders’ they chose the server’s name.

On The 8th Infantry everyone has a part to play, there are so many ways to play the game and in so many other games teamwork is an option that is not always necessary. In Squad your shooting ability is not everything, A good medic supporting his squad is more important to the team than a great marksman any day.

The team behind the [8 FE] server also enjoy the Squad clan community as a whole, priding themselves on having good relations with fellow clans and communities as well as participating in squad community events.

The Eagles are a mix of young and old, serving and non-serving, all races, creeds and religions, experienced players and people who have just bought the game.

What makes this community amazing is their sense of family, they believe in looking after their own, their community is a place of betterment, encouragement and enjoyment, Not just in Squad but in all walks of life.

The admin team commits to seeding every Thursday and Sunday, with a good mix of time zones across North America & Europe.

Link: Discord (LINK URL)

Jenny's Notes: I had lots of fun on this server, I received a nice warm welcome and joined a squad with one of the members. They focus on supporting new players on their server, giving them assistance to teach them on how to play the game in a way that works for their server. I saw the admins act professionally while dealing with any issues that occurred during my visit. I would highly recommend joining this server for a few games!

Hi Maplers,

I’d like to provide you all with an update on the current state of MapleStory, including the Reboot stability issues, the recent announcement regarding changes to the ‘Kishin Shoukan’ skill, timelines regarding the release of certain content this year, as well as address a few other topics we know you are concerned about.

Lag and Server Instability Issue

Over the past several weeks and during several periods over the last year or so, we know that server lag and latency issues have been an ongoing problem in the Reboot world server. First of all, we sincerely apologize that this is still happening and that our teams have not been able to mitigate it yet.

As many of you have reported and discussed within the community, although these issues seem to be most severe during our summer and winter updates when there is a larger influx of players, the server lag also persists in between these updates and the severity of the issue seems to be different between Reboot channels.

We are continuing to conduct a thorough investigation with several of our teams to see if the issue is caused by certain contents or systems within the code, or our server infrastructure. However, we are not able to find the root cause yet.

We highly suspect that the lag is caused by the increased amount of information that has to be handled with the increased number of players. But we are also investigating other potential causes, like if there is particular player behavior that has become more prevalent recently, that may be increasing the amount of information needing to be handled by our systems. We are utilizing various performance monitoring systems at the moment to investigate this issue further.

In parallel to this investigation, we are also looking into ways to optimize several aspects of our systems, in an attempt to mitigate the lag as soon as possible.

Again, we apologize that it is taking a long time to look into this issue, but I wanted you to know that we will be continuing to look into this issue with a high priority.

Although we understand that alleviating the server lag in Reboot is ultimately the goal, we do want to provide you all with a small token of our apology and appreciation for bearing with us as we continue to work on this. We plan to provide all of you with an apology gift that you will be able to claim once per account when you log into the game after our v.230 game update maintenance, currently planned for February 9. The specific contents of this gift for all players are the following:

• Magnificent Growth Potion
• Typhoon Growth Potion
• Extreme Growth Potion (x3)
• [Updated January 19] Symbol Selector Coupon (x1): Select 1 of the following:
  • Arcane Symbol Selector Coupon (x100)
  • Sacred Symbol Selector Coupon (x25)
• Sherbet Pet (30 Day) Coupon
• Master Craftsman's Cube (x5)
• Meister's Cube (x5)
• Maple Tour VIP Pass Coupon (x30)

Kanna’s ‘Kishin Shoukan’ Skill

As many of you know, the ‘Kishin Shoukan’ skill has undergone several updates within the past few years, and internally we have been constantly reviewing the effect of these changes and continuing to discuss the future of the skill.

In late 2018, I had mentioned that changes to Kanna and Kishin were inevitable due to the stress this skill was causing to our server processing and the unintended ways this very powerful skill was being used by players, which conflicted with the overall direction of the game.

The first of many of these changes occurred in 2019 when we reduced the overall effectiveness of the skill’s monster respawn time altering effects to combat illicit use, as well as introduce other ways to encourage players to take advantage of the benefits the skill offered.

Then in 2020, we made further adjustments to this skill to reduce the effectiveness even more. Again, we felt it was necessary to make these changes since we saw that our initial changes in 2019 had not really addressed the core issues we wanted to address.

Even though this skill had negative ramifications on the game balance and server processing, we took an incremental approach to adjusting ‘Kishin Shoukan’, since the skill was so powerful. We wanted to gather more data after these changes to help determine a course of action that would align with the overall health and direction of the game, while considering all the feedback from players.

Behind the scenes, we discussed at length all of the feedback you provided regarding this skill and the changes we made, reviewed data on how this skill was being used and what effect it had on the overall balance and future direction of the game, and what sort of effect these would have on the new player experience.

After our recent discussions, the next step we plan to take for this skill is to remove the monster respawn time altering effects of the skill and replace it with a 10% increase to EXP gained. We plan to introduce this change in our summer update later this year.

Although this decision has been made considering the health of the future game environment and new player experiences, we will continue to adjust other Kanna skills in order to ease the transition of this change for those who play Kanna as their main character.

Upcoming Content Plans

One of the many things we failed to communicate to you is clear information about our upcoming content plans. After my last memo, I know there was confusion about the plan to release 64-bit client and Yeti x Pink Bean World content in Global MapleStory. Both of these things needed to be reviewed more carefully, so it was difficult to confirm the schedule at the time. However, today we can confirm that we plan to release both of these in our March update this year.

We also see a lot of questions and confusion about when certain content will be released in Global MapleStory and why it may not be released within the timeline that you may be expecting.

As you know, Global MapleStory has years' worth of content and specifications that all need to work together smoothly. So that large amount of content needs to be taken into consideration when introducing even small changes and Quality of Life improvements that may seem trivial. We plan our content roadmap based on the timeline we need for several parts of this process. This process includes reviewing how long it will take for us to implement this content to fit within Global MapleStory, discussion within our teams on how this content will interact with other Global MapleStory content, while allowing ourselves time to iterate on the changes if necessary.

In order to clear up some confusion about when some content will be released this year, please see below for a tentative high-level timeline for when we are planning to release certain content for Global MapleStory.

• February 2022
  • Tower of Oz content and reward improvements
  • Additional Quality of Life improvements and bug fixing for:
    
    • Guilds
    • Skills
    • Abilities
    • Various Reboot world content
  • Chu Chu Food Festival Event
  • Cube and flame adjustments
    
    • [Updated February 9] Increased availability of flames from Elite Monsters and Elite Champions for all worlds
    • Removal of cubes and flame related items from sources that contributed to less than 1% of overall players’ acquisition methods
  • Adjustments to the set effects of AbsoLab and Arcane Umbra Equipment
• March 2022
  • Yeti x Pink Bean World
  • 64-bit Client
• Summer 2022
  • Reboot world Intense Power Crystal price increase from 3x to 5x compared to non-Reboot worlds
  • Additional revamps to Boss Rewards
  • Kanna skill adjustments
• To Be Determined in 2022 (January - July)
  • Reboot world sale of pets that can obtain items in a broader range than other pets
  • Player Housing content
  • Lower Star Force Enhancement costs by 20%

Please note that for the sake of brevity with this memo, the above list does not include all the content and events to be released in the future and we also will not be going into too much detail about each item listed above yet. We simply wanted to provide a high-level look at the major content and changes in the near future that you may have questions about. We will provide more details about these items in the future.

There are many more discussions and content planned for this year, however we aren’t ready to discuss or talk about them yet at this time. I know it may be frustrating to hear, but we want to do our best to provide you with accurate information so that it doesn’t cause more confusion.

As we mentioned in the brief statement last week, we also know there are many more topics you are concerned about, and questions you may have even after reviewing the information mentioned above. We won't be able to answer all of your concerns at once, so please continue to let us know your thoughts and feedback and we will try to address as many of them as we can.

Thank you,
Dennis “SavageAce” Bernardo
Senior Producer – MapleStory

Hey Everyone!

Hope you all had a good time over the holidays, today we’ve got a big quality of life update!

The most important part of the update is that Besiege is switching to 64bit! This will mean players with powerful computers will see a huge performance boost when playing with larger machines, during testing we’ve seen up to a 3x FPS boost on certain workshop items!

We feel like now is a good time to make the shift to 64bit as it will put Besiege in a good position going forward, allowing us greater freedom to pursue more exciting features in the future.

If you’re still running a 32bit operating system then don’t worry! You’ll still be able to play Besiege as we’ve created a “legacy32bit” branch of the game on Steam, click here for a guide on how to change to the 32bit branch!
However, you will need a 64bit operating system in order to play newer updates for Besiege.

In addition to shifting to 64bit we’ve got a host of new features, improvements and bug fixes for you. There’s a full changelog at the bottom of this post but here are some of the highlights:

• Added more features for the logic system, including new gate options and support for variables in place of keyboard inputs, making complex logic systems easier to manage & track
  
  
• Reworked Ipsilon campaign island that includes the advanced brick system, present in the later campaign islands, as well as fixing a bunch of issues with levels

• Increased the number of maximum cloud saves from 1,000 to 10,000
  
  
• Added more level editor objects
  
  
• Added language support for Italian, Polish, Turkish, Chinese Traditional (Taiwan), Chinese Traditional (Hong Kong)
  
  
• Made UI improvements, New Tutorial system & a bunch more stuff!

That’s all for today but watch this space, we’ve been working on a whole bunch of stuff since our last post and we have lots more to talk about in the next few weeks! :)

Cheers,
Von


FEATURES

• Updated to windows 64 bit (for windows, linux and macOS already support it)
  
• Skins bottom bar fold out UI now shows you the most recently used skins in the first column if you use Advanced Building
  
• In advanced building you can now switch keyboard inputs to variables to make complex logic systems easier to keep track of
  
• Increased max number of cloud saves from 1000 to 10000
  
• Added new connection type: Playfab
  
• New level editor objects
  - Floating Crystal
  - Sandbox Mountain
  - Monk Idol statue
  - Crystal
  - Gold Nugget
  - Mine Cart
  - Dragon Ribs
  - Rotating Crank
  
• New languages
  - Traditional Chinese (Taiwan)
  - Traditional Chinese (Hong Kong)
  - Italian
  - Polish
  - Turkish
  
• New Settings
  - Added setting to make the camera look at the center of all the blocks instead of the average
  - Camera Sensitivity
  - Soft / Hard shadows toggle
  
• Updated ipsilon brick levels for modern breaking systems
  
• Save + Load menu workshop tabs to more easily keep track of your subscriptions and uploads
  
• Glass surfaces now cast semitransparent shadows
  
• Glass surfaces now have slightly less intense reflection
  
• Improved thumbnail generation code with better centering and colours
  
• Scroll wheel now can interact with time slider for precision increments
  
• Boulder pieces now don't overlap and they inherit the velocity from before breaking
  
• Explosion updated to be more performant and minor visual improvements for slowmotion
  
• Logic Gate options added:
  - Binary Counter
  - SR Latch
  - D Latch
  - Random
  
• New tutorial system, that shows you more clearly how to do steps, with an example base machine for level 1
  
• Made it possible to select thumbnails from your pc for when uploading to the workshop
  
• Made it possible to update thumbnails from in game for previously uploaded items (if not selected, it won't change the thumbnail)
  
• When updating a workshop item it'll auto assign the tags that was used last

CHANGES

• The machine bounding box now doesn't render in front of your machine
  
• Local snapping for level editor translate tool now snaps to local grid instead of global
  
• Transform gizmos for level editor now hide while holding shift
  
• Single broken blocks now are ignored by the camera when following the machine
  
• Surface block hidden if not Advanced building mode
  
• Skins are now off per default
  
• Improved colour correction for the Krolmar island
  
• Improved colour correction for Ipsilon
  
• Slight improvement to fire spread
  
• Changed one multiplayer achievement from requiring 25 servers to 10 instead
  
• Making propellers automatically align themselves around blocks that spin around their base axis
  
• Steering hinges auto return per default now
  
• Updated some achievement names
  
• Changed connection type selection to tabs in multiverse

FIXES

• stopped deflecting steering hinges on simulation start
  
• fixed some slight memory leak issues when loading skins and block mods
  
• when detaching surface blocks in a selection containing other block types, it now doesn't duplicate the others.
  
• when using modding tools to scale surfaces or blocks surfaces connect to, broken pieces now match the original surface scale.
  
• Surface corners don't show in automatic thumbnails
  
• foliage doesn't render on top of fog anymore
  
• fixed Ambient Occlusions sometimes missing in level selects
  
• fixed an issue where grass and blood decals would make a slight dark square around the bounds of the decal
  
• fixed when duplicating or detaching selections with surface blocks the reference pivot sometimes changing
  
• Fixed who needs a mechanic achievement using the right category when you have mods
  
• Made AI blood decal not spawn on the ground when dying in the sky
  
• Fixing Krolmar Artifact level so keys are more easily accepted
  
• various dx9 issues fixed
  
• fixing sometimes loading machines would say they intersected the floor even if they aren't
  
• fixed an issue where moving a surface corner on top of another surface corner, resulting in the surface being incomplete and removed, would throw errors
  
• fixed an issue where certain brick objects weren't updating right for clients
  
• Drill now properly receives emulation
  
• unpowered wheels now are allowed to spin as fast as other wheels

MODDING

• Added hidden toggle to turn off collision for surface blocks
  
• Added social media mode to the cam tools
  
• Added min and max grid static surface grid size variables
  
• hidden logic gate option to make emulation loops burn out to avoid spamming behaiour

• Fixed missing sensor area cylinder
  
• Fixed sorting files by date and throwing correct logs if invalid file loaded
  
• Fixed negatively scaled fire areas
  
• Fixed logicgate counter reset not resetting always or fully always
  
• Fixed automation update rate, to be like previous update consistently at a single time instead of staggered
  
• Made surface block zero volume check between corners and edges so zero volume is more accurately determined
  
• Launching certain languages breaking until switching languages
  
• Making emulation messages work even if the key is set to None
  
• Added tutorial toggle option
  
• Fixed drills not emulating again
  
• Fixed spark particles over emitting on drills and saws
  
• Added hidden mass slider to surface
  
• The gerenuks in multiplayer now face the right way
  
• Bomb explosion sizes stay consistent again as it did in 1.05
  
• Blocks with shadow casters now cast the correct shadows using skins
  
• Fixed occasional error when switching blockmapper from a secondary emulation input to another block

• MP bounding box now hides its front like in SP
  
• Surface Block changes:
  - Corner points would sometimes obscure other selections
  - fixed missing colliders for folded surface blocks
  - removed overlapping double collider generation with some surface block configurations (in those cases the mass will be halfed aswell)
  - Mass slider changes is now loaded in vanilla no matter if the toggle for it is enabled
  - hidden collision toggle now properly updates mass
  
• fixed broken key inputs for logic systems in level editor
  
• fixed broken discord link in the Title Screen
  
• fixed an accidentially changed event/action for mod stability (FragmentVisualController.onVisualBreak)
  
• fixing shadows on instantiating a block with non default skin
  
• slight optimisation to moving a lot of surface nodes at the same time
  
• Japanese Translation tweaks
  
• Fixed nre from loading a machine while having a surface block on the current machine.
  
• fixed bug after defeating the last level of Krolmar causing the player to be unable to build on the machine.
  
• Fixed baloons at length 0 breaking skins toggle and shadow mode.
  
• Fixed some issues with machine thumbnail generation when the build zone was moved away from the default position
  
• Machine tutorial now properly hide when using the level editor tools
  
• now doesn't change the thumbnail when updating a machine without touching the thumbnail.
  
• removed error logs from opening workshop update tab in save.
  
• fixing overwriting thumbnails when changing content of a workshop upload but not having selected a new thumbnail
  
• fixed not using completion state correctly to gauge what tutorials players have finished
  
• fixed an issue with surface blocks having an empty list of corners for other players

Added
-Added a new hand-held object: Confetti.
-Added new clothes: Police Uniform and its hat, BD-2 Prisoner, Scrubs and Surgical Caps, and Firefighter Uniform and its hat.
-Added a new feature: Win-Win Invitation and its coupon.
-Added a new feature: the fill rate of the Backpack.
-Added a new tutorial for Waypoint.
-Added a new presentation for platform connection points.
-Added a new sound for zoom in and out for the Map.
-Added new tabs in the Clothes button: Hair and Brow.
-Added new avatar animation in the Sports Center.
-Added the refund amount on the refund notifications.
-Added a default Polity flag for newly established countries.


Changed
-Changed the sound of the President’s announcement.
-Changed the look of the “Add Slot” panel.
-Changed the look of the “Split” panel.
-Changed the look of the “Expand Capacity” panel.
-Changed the look of the “Focus” mode and the main huds.
-Changed the duration of clothes obtained from the gift boxes.
-Changed the way of moving furniture(instead of a long click, there will be just a click to move).
-Changed the available footprint representation of objects and furniture.
-Changed the highlight indication of some quests.
-Changed the representation of the purchased package’s items in chat.
-Changed the setting of NPC sounds.
-Changed the Forestry machine sounds into 2D.
-Changed the automatic dual profession adding in the Presidency.
-Changed the amount of Country Balance for the newly established countries.
-Changed the “Establish Country” panel.


Fixed
-Fixed the bug in tooltips of rewards of the “Level Up” panel.
-Fixed the bug in the footprint representation while moving objects.
-Fixed the bug in switching in the “Focus” mode.
-Fixed the bug in chopping trees.
-Fixed the bug in a costume.
-Fixed the bug in removing the furniture.
-Fixed the bug in the contest reward.
-Fixed the bug in the profile likes.
-Fixed the bug in the growth of crops.
-Fixed bugs in the Leaderboard.
-Fixed the bug in the Room Shop.
-Fixed the bug in the head emojis.
-Fixed the bug in the Backpack fill rate.
-Fixed the bug in the duration of clothes.


Working On
-Working on the in-game Map to improve the gaming experience.
-Working on a social deduction game.
-Working on the quest system and its variety to get the in-game world.
-Working on the balance system to develop the game dynamic.
-Working on the variety of NPC dialogues.
-Working on improving the Presidency System.
-Working on more UI animations.

- Combo multiplier should be visible again
- The bounce-on-fans-between-rooftops mission goal in "Dye Hard" (in level: Scared Of Heists) should now work for all kinds of bounces