Hey Scholars! In this Devlog I cover the programming behind creating the magic system you see in Scholar of the Arcane Arts. Check out the video below. Reminder you can play the demo during Steam's NextFest!

OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP 2021: THE FULL LIST OF THE WINNERS

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Join the d'Spot's community to share your feedback with the devs and chat with other puny humans like you:

Game Update 1.16 is now live on Steam.

Greetings, Survivors!

2022 may have only just begun, but the first update of the year (1.16) has already been released on Steam! We dedicated the end of last year and the beginning of this one to a “clean sweep” type of update, which is to say that we went through our backlog and fixed everything we could within a given timeframe. This approach also gave us the opportunity to plan out the content for future updates. If you’re interested in learning more about our plans for this year, make sure to check out our DayZ in 2022 article for all the details.

Update 1.16 contains a variety of fixes and adjustments which are aimed at certain balancing and gameplay issues.
This can be read in detail on the following article: https://dayz.com/article/game-update/DayZ-Update-1-16

Server-side gameplay settings (introduced in a previous game update) were expanded by adding the ability to switch off the 2D map layout for a more immersive experience (only the 3D map will be available in this instance). You’ll also now find additional parameters to control the length of the unconscious state to tailor the experience according to play styles (i.e. interaction-based vs PvP servers). Speaking of servers, we have also increased the limits of script class indexing, which were causing issues when combining a larger amount of mods together. Modders and server owners will also appreciate the extensions within the firearms API, which now allows the spawning of magazines and bullets directly into newly created empty firearms (this was only possible before through the central economy).

And it wouldn’t truly be an update without us introducing a bit of content with it. That’s why we’re happy to introduce the Bizon, an iconic AK-based .380 submachine gun with an extra-large magazine. We’re also introducing the alarm clock, which allows you to see the time in-game and offers you the ability to set an alarm for a certain time in order to scare your enemies or lure the infected.

We’re already hard at work on the next game update, but we hope you’ll have fun with this one for now.

On behalf of the DayZ team,

Adam


Please read the full article here:
https://dayz.com/article/game-update/DayZ-Update-1-16

All new additions, changes and fixes can be found here: Patchnotes:
https://forums.dayz.com/topic/252279-stable-update-116/

・fixed a collision of some stairs of the first map

Small note from Raw Fury before we continue. Hello! My name is Fiona and I'm a Community Manager here at Raw Fury. I'll be posting on behalf of AL and you'll see me lurking around the steam forums. Thank you!


Wait, what? Is it February already? All I can say is time flies when you’re having fun. This update is a bit overdue but as always, if I’m a bit tardy in posting on the devlog it’s because I’m making our dream game.

The new year has been a torrent of making cool plans, have Covid wreck it all and instead write awesome code!

Our big carrot of Q1 2022 was that Raw Fury and I were going to GDC in San Francisco to promote Skald. We always knew it was a risky prospect and as Omicron ramped up over Christmas we reconsidered and canceled the trip. And let me tell you: I’m almost glad we did!

It’s given me time to dig deep on a few areas that I always wanted to improve in the game. I’ll try to summarize some of the latest developments:

I’ve rewritten the GUI system. Yes, pretty much all of it. It was pretty much one of the last components of the game where I used Unity’s built in system but it was a bit of a mess. I’m sure someone who’s better at Unity could pull it off, but I really just want Unity to compile my game and leave me alone beyond that.

Thankfully, the Skald engine is really good at drawing pixels on screen with perfect precision and so I was able to use my engine to do stuff like draw fonts, UI-elements and handle transitions and mouse interactions.

One of the first big advantages is that I can now have the game scale perfectly to the screen so it gets pixel perfect resolution.



If you zoomed in on the game in full-screen mode, it used looked like the left image. Now everything scales perfectly and it all looks like the right image. Crisp enough to make your eyes bleed.

For a pixel-purist like me, another advantage of the new system is that we can swap Unity’s vectorized fonts for home-made “real” pixel fonts.



I also added the ability to insert big illuminated first letters at the start of the script. I need to polish the graphic design a little bit but all in all I think it’s going to look amazing.

But there’s more: The new system allows for highlighting of keywords in the text that you can mouse over to get helpful info. Naturally this will also be possible on menus like the character sheets where you can mouse over attributes to get a description or on the map where mousing over objects will allow you to get info in pop-up boxes.



Finally, note how the menu above slides on and off the screen for a bit of a smoother transition.

With all the UI stuff, the technical stuff is now done but there’s still work to be done to really take advantage of its full potential. Stay posted for more updates!

The moment I signed with Raw Fury, one of the first features I knew I wanted to expand upon a bit was the animation system.

Building an animation system that cycles through frames of animation is easy enough. The trouble is scaling it. There are basically three types of models in Skald:

• Simple Models: These are models like the rats in the demo. They have few animation frames and very few customization options. This works because for the most part, you won’t see them doing anything outside of combat so all you need is a few idle frames and some combat frames.
  
• Custom Models: These models have more complex animations so we can have it perform more complex actions. A great example of that is the big monster below. These are very cool and expressive but costly to make since each frame needs to be hand drawn. The upside is that there isn’t a ton of them in the game.
  
• Humanoid models: This is the tricky part and where the Skald engine shines. The humanoid models in Skald are “paper-dolls”. That means you can swap costumes, items, skin-color, hair etc and have it show up on the model. They also need dozens of animation frames (and perhaps hundreds by the end). This means hundreds of thousands of different frames to account for all possible permutations of costumes and animations.

Fear not! The Skald engine solves this by doing humanoid animation in a semi-procedural way. Basically each model consists of a dozen components drawn using a kind of animation skeleton. Legs, torsos, arms, heads, hair, items etc are drawn in relation to each other and colored according to specifications. This means that for each new behavior we want to animate, we’ll only ever have to add a very few frames.

As an example, look at the image above again. The character falling to his knees is not a unique animation. Any of the characters on-screen would perform the same animation if given the command.

The awesome part is that adding that particular animation strip to ALL HUMANOID MODELS in the game took only about 20 minutes.

Anyways, you’ll be seeing a lot more of this system as we go. Here is an example of me experimenting with adding some animation frames to the player’s attack animation:



Trust me; the system works – it’s just that I’m not a very good animator 🙂

This one is the Golden Goose for me. My level editor has been a pretty big bottleneck so far. I just couldn’t get it right and I lacked a clear vision for what a great tool would even look like for Skald. Then I saw the amazing “Tiled” editor and I was saved.

“Tiled” had a simple suit of features that were all I had ever asked for and I knew I needed something like that for Skald. I had two options:

1) adopt “Tiled” (it’s free) and use it for Skald or 2) try to write my own version of it? Well, I just told you I rewrote my whole GUI system to get nicer fonts so I doubt you’ll be surprised to hear I made my own in-house version of Tiled.



This may seem excessive, but a good level editor is critical and this way I get one that is seamlessly integrated with my other tools. I also don’t have to depend on external software. Most importantly though: All the Skald tools will now be collected in a single application so the Skald community can eventually get to mod and create their own application using the exact same tools I used to make this game.

I still have some development to do on the editor before it’s fully functional but as soon as it is, I’ll be doing some streaming of me making levels in style!

So in broad terms, the next big step is doing a major overhaul of the demo to be released in spring / summer. This is primarily to show off and test the new features and it’s also a hugely important tool to get Skald on the radar of press and content creators.

To that end, we’re also going to redo the Steam pages, the website and make a new trailer.

We will be doing more Beta testing before then as well but I’m waiting till things are a bit more stable so I don’t get swamped in reports of issues that are already known. Testers are a limited resource and we need to save it until it really counts.

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That’s what I had time for today! I hope it was somewhat informative. To stay posted, follow us on Twitter and join our Discord!

Cheers,

AL

The Chinese New Year Event has come to an end!

Team [Wooly-Bubble] is victorious! Members of Team [Wooly-Bubble] will receive the Chinese New Year Monkey the next time they login!



We're so excited for our next big update which will launch the second week of March. Our team believes it'll be the most important update yet!


Team Splitside & Daedalic Entertainment

Three weeks ago, we launched the completed version of Not For Broadcast. That event marked the end of the 2-year Early Access development phase. During this time, we've polished the game and added lots of content, including the third and final episode that concludes the story with one of fourteen different endings.

We would like to share some of the fun stuff that has been happening since we pushed that "Publish" button on the game's page. Here we go!


So, let us start with a fundamental question: do you obey?


ːadvancelogoː 28% of the players who completed the game got a pro-government ending;
ːdisruptː 72% went anti-government.

More than twice as many people have chosen to disobey. Which once again proves that humans are freedom-loving creatures.


The final version of the game has been received well by critics and press. We stand at 86 on Metascore based on favorable reviews from, among other outlets, Screen Rant, Hardcore Gamer and GameGrin.



The user Metascore is currently 8.6.


95%. Overwhelmingly Positive. We feel like we're living in paradise. It's just awfully nice, to be honest. Thank you so much to everyone who has taken their precious time to give us a thumbs up—it really helps the game to be featured more by Steam and thus attract more players.

Here are the reviews that we liked the most:


Click the image to enlarge

The Early Access version was covered by some of the most well-known gaming YouTubers from all over the world like jacksepticeye, Kuplinov ► Play, Gameplayrj and Dương FG. The trend has continued with the 1.0 launch: several big names have gotten their hands on the game, including 8-BitRyan, ViteC ► Play and Northernlion. Currently, Not For Broadcast is standing at 6.6K followers on Twitch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6cikerRDjc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsvX3snTuGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIRo8--sMhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF-vD2UzYdg

Link to the Twitch videos

Bloody hell, we didn't expect that much love from our community! There is already a lot of amazing creations from the players on Twitter, let alone the Discord server where #fanart is one of the most active channels. Here are just some of the fan works:



Click on the banner below

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Once again, a big "Thank you" to our astounding community! You've been nothing but supportive of us the whole way and we couldn't have wished for more. Now, if you don't mind, we're off to celebrate (again)!

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Join the community:

ːNFBː Discord
ːNFBː Twitter
ːNFBː Facebook
ːNFBː Instagram
ːNFBː Reddit

• Added Steam Deck support
  
• Koalefant Trunk Steak’s name and icon now shows up correctly in the cookbook ingredient lists
  
• Fixed a bug preventing Crabking and Dragonfly from spawning after their world settings are changed from none to something else.
  
• Fixed a crash when ramming burnt Above Average Tree Trunks.
  
• Fixed a rare Kitcoon crash
  
• Fixed a crash with the world presets

Welcome to all Great Dealers around the world! :dldollar:

It is a great pleasure and honor for us to announce that we just released Dealer's Life 2!



If you own Dealer's Life 1 there is a bundle available to get an additional 10% off! 🤯

We worked very hard for months, with days and nights spent to design and code all the new features and improvements! Here's a detailed list of all the new things Dealer's Life 2 contains compared to the first one:

• All Dealer’s Life original mechanics and features
  
• Overall graphics improvement: now, this is a great change
  
• 20 new avatars: you can choose to be whomever you want! Every avatar has its own skills set so choose wisely
  
• 700+ items: from yachts to candlesticks, from swords to action figures… you name it, we have it
  
• Infinite customers: now with improved procedural generation, you’ll encounter countless different customers, each with their own name, characteristics and wonderful appearance
  
• Pawned items: a pawned item can be paid a fraction of its price and the item’s owner could get it back after a while by settling the loan, but if the owner does not show up you’ve got a nice new item at a very low price
  
• Stolen items: if you happen to get your hands on a stolen item you’d better sell it real quick if you don’t want troubles with local police
  
• Fake and replica items: fake items can now be converted into replicas. A replica item is a lot less valuable than a fake item but selling it won’t affect your reputation at all. Will you pay the price to stay clean?
  
• 100+ new encounters: funny events, strange situations, crazy deals! It’s unlikely you’ll manage to see all of them in a single game
  
• 11 new special characters: from shady guys to famous collectors, every character will be a surprise!
  
• Random events: anything can happen but you decide! Every event has choices to take but sometimes a specific skill or employee could really make the difference
  
• Quests: many kinds of missions and challenges to face
  
• Overarching story: from the suburbs to the top of the sky, the whole story!
  
• Reputation based events: keep an eye on your reputation since different things could happen if you’re an honest dealer or a criminal
  
• Bank: a place where you can ask for loans or invest money
  
• Item Catalogue: a new section where you can unlock and collect every single item of the game and read interesting anecdotes about real items and collectors
  
• Trophy Hall: a new section where you can see your most valuable deals and keep your very own collection of items
  
• My Home: a new section where you can manage your own house, vehicle and landscape to create the home of your dreams
  
• New employee: you can hire among 10 different types of employees, including the brand new bouncer, each one with his own unique abilities
  
• Auctions improvements: auctions are now visually great, more challenging and quicker to play. Selling auction has now its own animation
  
• Difficulty level: if you find the game too easy or too hard ;)
  
• Improved game statistics: to get a clearer view of your current situation
  
• 50+ game achievements: will you be able to unlock them all?
  
• Multiple saves: now you can keep up to 3 games at the same time
  
• New localizations: we now support a total of 11 languages

And, for all the players that already know us, here's a recap on what is specifically included in the 1.0 update:

• 50 new encounters: bringing the total number of special encounters now to over 100!
  
• 3 new special characters: two great personalities and a very special VIP that will appear in the late game
  
• Quests: some special characters will now propose special tasks that will bring great rewards should you succeed
  
• Overarching story: from the suburbs to the top of the sky, the whole story!
  
• New item selection mechanic for encounters: in some encounters you will be asked to give away an item. Now you can choose what item to give away instead of having a random item removed from your inventory
  
• End game changed: with the introduction of a main plot we changed the end game accordingly
  
• 20 new newspaper articles: these are special articles related to famous personalities of the game
  
• New item details window: visual improvements of the item details window for Item Catalogue and Trophy Hall sections
  
• 20+ curiosities about items and collectors: many items are now linked to specific anecdotes of real life items or collectors! You can read them in the item details window of the Item Catalogue or in the detail view of items in your inventory by selecting the “i” button
  
• 50+ Achievements: will you be able to unlock them all?
  
• New share buttons: now you can show to everybody the craziest items and customers that you encounter!
  
• 4 new localizations: the game is now fully translated in French, Russian, Korean &Thai
  
• Lots of minor improvements and bug fixes

Achievements are unlocked at the end of each in-game day. So if you've been playing before, load the save and do an in-game day to unlock the achievements you are eligible for.

We hope you are as excited as we are, let us know what you think in the comments! ːsteamhappyː
And if you like the game, please consider writing a review, these can help a lot in spreading the word about Dealer's Life 2! <3 :dlgift:

Your friendly indie devs,
Abyte Entertainment

Hi!

Today we're releasing a new update for the game, featuring a bunch of new content that we hope you'll enjoy!

New content:

• New weapons: Added 4 new starter weapons, unlocked right away:
  
  • Rod of Darkness
    
  • Mjölnir
    
  • Dragonfury
    
  • Plaguebearer
• New room type: Gilded Treasure Chest. These treasures contain a random high level weapon, but you'll need to spend some coins to get it!
  
• New dungeon type (campaign only): Onslaught dungeons. These are linear dungeons where you can only advance.
  
• Added Photo mode to take nice pictures from weird angles!

Gameplay changes:

• Amulets now have levels mid-run, the same as weapons. This level grants an increasingly powerful passive bonus (now unlocked by default).
  
• Adjusted a bunch of unpopular perks to make them more interesting.
  
• Kraz's Trance is now stopped ahead of time when the fight ends.
  
• The stats screen now shows campaign upgrades.
  
• Reduced fire rate reduction of the "Make sure not to miss" combat room modifier, so it doesn't feel that slow.

Improvements:

• Added a "resume" indicator on the main menu when there's a game in progress
  
• Music now changes when the boss is spawned in Gauntlet dungeons.
  
• Added some memory saving measures. Should help limiting maximum VRAM/RAM usage.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed stepping on lava while having barrier not unhiding the HUD.