A Fantasy trilogy extending over more than 1800 pages, a point-and-click videogame adventure lasting 15 hours and beyond, spin-off tales adding hundreds of pages, plus the forthcoming comic-book expansion of paths and plots: the “Pirin” Saga is coming, as its large High Fantasy world, open to travellers, unfolds its manifold, outstanding, intricated lore, in each of their several layers of reading, and a tantalizing wealth of innuendos, pointing at ancient mythologies and cultures. Henceforth, treading such unexplored territories of imagination is going to be even more fascinating and exciting, because of the magnificent artbook series started with “Civilizations” (2020) collecting many among the finest illustrations of Gaimat, the amazing Saga setting, as well as yet-undisclosed sketches by the author and a team of exceptional Italian artists, among the most skilled in Fantasy and History illustration. This new volume accompanies us like an irreplaceable atlas to discover places, cities, maps and plans of the saga’s most evocative location, through he refined artworks by Sebastiano B. Brocchi and the team including Walter Brocca, Angela Gubert, Maria Rosaria Monticelli, Moreno Paissan and Francesca Urbinati! More than 200 pages of paintings, digital artworks, and sketches, constituting a proper art gallery in book form, not to be missed by collectors of Fantasy readers alike.

You can buy the artbook here

Hi everybody,

This is not an easy thing to write, so we’ll cut right to the chase:
After being in development on and off for almost seven years, we had to decide to postpone Escape the Loop's development indefinitely.

We realize many of you will be upset, and we get that. This was not an easy decision, and it’s even more difficult because we know so many of you were looking forward to Escape the Loop. You’ll have lots of questions, so we’ll try our best to answer them:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For all intents and purposes, yes. It wouldn’t be fair to you to say otherwise. We may revisit it in the future. We still have everything we produced in the past years, and we still own the trademark for the name. But for now, it’s stuck in development hell and there’s no telling when or if that may change.

The simple truth is: We didn’t find a publisher. This was our most ambitious project, and in turn, our most expensive one too. Most of the development so far was funded by a combination of grants and our own cash. We hoped to develop a prototype that would convince a publisher to sign with us. In the end, that didn’t happen.

There’s no way to answer this for sure, but we assume our prototype just wasn’t convincing. Developing an open-world game is hard, especially one that is as experimental as ETL. In game development, you usually create what’s called a Vertical Slice, a small portion of the game that looks and feels as finished as it can. This could be a single level in Super Mario, for example. Because ETL would’ve been so thoroughly non-linear, we failed to do that and had hoped publishers could look past it with enough imagination. They couldn’t, and we don’t blame them.

Crowdfunding would be an obvious next step for some, but we feel it’s not for us. Most importantly, our budget needs are far higher than we feel we could realistically ask from the community.

Over the next week, we’ll be monitoring ETL’s Steam forums to answer any questions you may have. After that, the forums will be shut down. If you have any questions after that point, feel free to get in touch on Twitter, or via email.

We’re heartbroken about this decision, but life must go on. Some of you may have already heard on social media that we already have a new project lined up, and it’s true. We’re currently working on ChromaGun 2, the sequel to our first game. It’s an adventure puzzle game about color, redemption, and the multiverse. If you want to find out more, you can check it out on Steam once the page goes live in a few days.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pulling the plug after almost seven years is hard, and we all wish this could’ve panned out differently. If you’re looking for a way to patch that ETL-shaped hole in your heart, we recommend you try out these games:

• Outer Wilds
  
• Twelve Minutes
  
• The Forgotten City
  
• The Sexy Brutale
  
• Oxenfree

So that’s it. We’re truly grateful for your support over these past years, and we truly wish this could’ve gone a different way. Hopefully, we’ll get to return to ETL someday.

As mentioned, if you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to ask.

All the best,
The Pixel Maniacs team

- Removed some test options and removed ability to play level 2

This week brings some audio and visual polish, an expansion to force type weapons, and a fix for those of you with gamepad disconnect issues. More polish, optimization, and the eagerly awaited Difficulty system are up next!

I know many of you have been playing Gunlocked for hours upon hours and are hungry for new content. The new difficulty system in the next big patch this month should provide many hours of new challenge while I work on the final zone and endless mode, which I expect to release in August. I'm working as fast as I can as a solo developer, but there are only so many hours in a day!

A lot of work under the hood had to happen for many of the changes this week, so I expect I missed some bugs. As always, let me know about any issues in the forums, on discord, or twitter, and I'll work to fix them as fast as I can.




New Pilot: Ram
Ram is a high skill pilot with a unique playstyle. His augment is extremely rewarding to master, and incredibly powerful in the late game, but he can take some time to get a feel for.

• Weapon: Gravity Wave
  - A forcefield forms in front of your ship. When an enemy is within range, the field triggers, knocking back and stunning any nearby enemies for 0.5 seconds, dealing 15 damage.
  
• Augment: Blowdozer
  - Force effects apply an explosive debuff, on up to 5 targets, that deals 40 damage in an area after 1 second or when the target dies.
  - The blowdozer charges up with movement. When fully charged, its area of effect is doubled.

New Weapon: Sideline
- Type: Force, Beam
- A cannon appears randomly on the left or right side of your ship and charges up an attack. It then fires a 20 damage beam of force energy that damages and knocks all enemies back that it passes through. 4 second recharge time.



New Utility: Feedback Loop
- When force effects hit enemies, the Feedback Loop's meter charges up. When the meter is full, the Feedback Loop will fill the recharge meter of one random weapon by 24%. Works on both timed and kinetic recharge weapons.

Quality of Life

• Updated Victory system and animation
  - players will now have 5 seconds to collect gems before a new victory animation plays out after defeating a final boss
  
• New Boss Music now plays during boss fights

Bug Fixes

• Gamepad Disconnect Fix
  - After extensive testing, it was determined that an incompatibility exists between the game engine I use, the gamepad drivers, and Steam, that could lead a small portion of players to have disconnect issues with their gamepads when changing scenes. A workaround was devised to use an older control extension as a compatibility backup in the event of a driver connection failure. You won't notice a significant difference in the event this happens, but the home button will no longer work, and the game may not auto-pause if your controller batteries die or it becomes unplugged. The game will check at the start of every new scene/game screen to attempt to use the more modern and optimized drivers. There may yet be edge case incompatibility issues, but this solution has solved the problem for every tester I got into the beta to try it.
  
• Smol Ship Augment should no longer unequip after a game.
  
• Screenshake should no longer get stuck on if the game pauses exactly when screenshake starts.

We are a team from Brezg Studio, and we make games with a story. Our previous project, For the People, a civil servant simulation, was about the life and suffering of the mayor of a small town in a fictional socialist country.

"With Good Intentions is a different story. It is a visual novel with two protagonists from different eras, telling of time and repentance, of incorrigible mistakes and the hope of salvation, which is still alive even in the midst of the walls of a cursed monastery.

We've already been to White Nights 2022, showing off Good Intentions gameplay and answering questions from attendees. And soon we'll be able to tell you even more.

Subscribe to our VKontakte page and add the game to your wishlist.

See you at Shemergard!

https://vk.com/withgoodintentions

We're hosting biweekly streams on our Twitch channel where we talk to Torn Banner developers, community members, and we'll soon be debuting upcoming features! Be sure to follow us over on our Twitch profile so you get notified every time we go live. You can watch a VOD of our latest stream on our Twitch channel, or archived on our YouTube channel below.


Our guest in this interview was Ryan Buckley, who is the Audio Director and Audio Engineer for Chivalry 2. He has been a member of the Torn Banner team for many, many years and also did the sound design for Age of Chivalry and Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. You could say he knows his way around by now! There are over 70,000 different sounds so far in the Chivalry 2 library, which is an insane number, all to help flesh out the audio landscape.

Buckley goes into detail on how all of the weapon sounds in Chivalry 2 are made. There is a big emphasis on using several sounds to make up a single weapon sound, and having these sounds randomized so you never hear the same sound twice in a row. This helps with player emersion and allows for the sounds to feel real and natural to the ear while playing. In order to do all of this, our audio engineers use something called Wwise. For every weapon that needs sounds, they also need different and unique sounds for every single attack type that the weapon can do. Below is a screenshot of only some of the sounds made for the Greatsword.



We've heard many compliments regarding the horse audio since the Tenosian Invasion update as well. One of the key components on making the horses sound grounded and a real part of the battlefield is how they sound as they're running around the player. This has to do with attenuation and how the sounds move around you while you're also moving around too. The hoof beats start of distant and grow to a booming stampede as they run past.

Generally one of Buckey's focuses is how the sounds would be impacted by the environment that they are played in to made them feel more grounded. How the sounds echo or reverberate off the environment whether you're inside a castle or out on the grassy battlefield, all of these things are taken into account.

While the bulk of the audio work is sound effects we can't forget about the iconic voice characters that you can choose from. We recently added four new voices, and have a selection of both male and female voices to choose from for all three factions. One of the most difficult parts of recording voices that you might not have thought about is all of that screaming they have to do! Voice actors have to be willing and able to do many takes where they're screaming into the microphone and shredding their voices. It's definitely a challenge recording session to do, but Buckley notes he rarely needs the actors to redo their lines because they get so into the recordings their doing.

One of the new voices this update, the Grizzeled Sentinel, was done by Jas Patrick who is a returning voice actor for Chivalry 2. Jas also recorded for the Imposter! Below is a reel of his Grizzeled Sentinel lines that you can equip in-game right now.


If you've heard the new music brought into the game in the Tenosian Invasion update, you may have heard a wonderful and angelic female voice featured. Here's a peak behind the scenes at that recording.


We can't write a post about audio without talking about J.D. Spears, the man behind the music of Chivalry 2. JD has composed many tracks for all of the different scenarios that you hear music in-game. This includes, but is not limited to, warmup music, dynamic music during gameplay, match ending music, map specific music, the main menu music, and more.

We've updated version 1.10 as a beta version with additional challenging elements!

Update contents.

[Character additions]
Three new characters will be added.
Shieru, Mashiro, and Korone.

[Added functionality]
Endless mode was added.
This content is for those who have cleared the higher difficulty levels and can play the game with special rules.
You can participate in ranking according to the number of days you have lasted.
Also, you can earn CP in the endless mode to increase your Ganbari point limit and release functions.
This will increase the Ganbari point limit to over 1000, but the amount of Ganbari points earned will be adjusted if it is over 1000.

[Specification change].
When securing a room, only the person who secured the room could gain experience, but now all allies in the room can gain experience.
Changed the algorithm for decreasing fame value.

[updated translations]
Added translation of achievements

[regarding special rules for endless mode].
*May be subject to change.

The game ends when all units are wiped out or the hole is secured.
You can compete with the world and friends in the ranking according to the number of days this game has lasted.

Auto-recruitment is not activated even if it is released.

An opponent will appear at regular intervals, the more time passes, the more powerful the opponent becomes.
Every half day a random item is added to the opponent.
Reinforcements will appear every half day depending on the room reserved for the opponent.

The level of the opponent who appears will be applied to the highest level of the allied characters.
Units in a room with 10 or more allies will have a reduced heating value.

The amount of CP and Ganbari points earned will increase according to the number of days spent in a room.


If you do not know how to use the beta version, please refer to the following
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1988940/view/3332114621758485886


This cute irassuto was drawn by Pumo.

IMPORTANT: for the stable operation of the game, you may need to update the graphics card drivers!

0.10.21
* game transferred to UnrealEngine 4.27
+ optimized game performance for large colonies (with a large number of buildings, equipment and staff)
- unused content removed
* reduced size of some textures
+ non-modal notifications
+ display of walkable areas
* fixed a bug with staff not being able to move away from launch pads
+ displaying driving routes for the selected character
+ added possibility to send a character to a selected point
- disabled motion blur
* fixed character transparency when the camera is indoors
* night brightness works for any post-processing settings
* prebuild navigation when loading station
* fixed characters passing through walls
* uniform brightness settings for all graphics quality settings
* resource bar introduces K, M, G indexes to reduce number length
* corrected English and Chinese localization
* faster rendering of masked materials
* number of constantly loaded textures was decreased
* object highlighting brightness was reduced by 2 times
* navigational beacon on the surface, which helps personnel find the way when there is a long distance between buildings
* interface zoom was reduced by default
* default camera size has been reduced
* pause in game save dialog
* deleting asteroids when leaving the solar system view
* fixed a bug with character activity change after waiting for a door to open
* added global illumination in the screen space
* fixed disabling of exhaust for photon engines
* minimum rendering scale value increased to 20%
* max brightness adjustment in space night has been increased by 10 times
- basket button removed from wall, door and track type selection buttons
* staff lanterns disabled at station loading
+ additional check to remove character actors when leaving the colony
- removed sun brightness limitation at low post-processing settings
* fixed construction of fixed sections when there is a shortage of materials
* deletion button was moved to the station panel header
* station removal is only allowed when viewed from the solar system
- hospital decor removed from lab
- all except the hospital decor was removed from hospitals
* fixed the placement of contracts in the faction dialog (could not fit into the screen)
* moved disassembly button to the title bar of the object
* added disassembly of robots into parts
* added check when removing block on station
+ added possibility to buy oxygen on Venus (you can't sell it)
+ added checking the shuttle route when saving the game
* fixed characters getting stuck on stairs
* fixed effects on navigation of some furniture
* updated the warehouse panel when founding a colony
- disabled highlighting of rooms when the camera moves
+ Added Performance group to the Viewbar
+ added FPS display
* prohibited deleting equipment by minimizing the panel while moving
* doctors must not work on deenergized equipment
* reduced variation in mining
* ban construction on pause
* UI: fixed values and ranges when changing numeric values by scrolling
+ in the tooltip of storage and tanks it is written how many cubic meters there are and how many are occupied
* single screen materials for monitors
+ Icons-modifiers for buttons of equipment creation were added (partially duplicated tooltips)
* in the display of equipment modifiers introduced suffixes K|M|G to reduce the length of numbers
+ information about new versions and history of changes ('what's new')
+ 3 types of new resources added: nuclear reactor fuel, recombination fuel, fusion reactor fuel
+ machines for producing new fuels were added
* nuclear, fusion and recombination engines now consume new types of fuel
+ robot maintenance room added, robot charging station and robot repair table moved to this room
* fixed the fall when removing the cell at the station with division into 2 parts
+ racks for storing idle robots were added
* nuclear fuel is available after researching compact fusion energy
- one of the desks in the break room has been removed
* prohibited setting up colonies by pushing outside the planet's surface
* community made localization fixes moved into the game
- disabled orbital camera
* fixed missing hints when building and installing items
* clear the counter of unreachable items, after teleporting a locked character
* corridor plants and coffee are available without building farms
* fixed lack of oxygen generation by plants in some rooms
* research speed -70%
* productivity of tier 3 miners +68%
* the cost of tier 3 miners decreased by 28%
* energy consumption by tier 3 miners +73%
* extraction of rare, noble and transuranic elements by a Level 1 miner -39%
* energy consumption by level 2 miners +64%
* Liquid fuel consumption by generator -20%
* indoor energy consumption -70%
* plant co2 consumption -32%
* production of heat resistant materials +360%
* tier 2 battery cost -10%
* crisis duration +80%
* parts prices -8%
* surgical table cost -2 electronics
* in the server room is reduced by 30 bulbs for the first, second and third equipment
* nonferrous metal costs -87% in wire production
* production of heat resistant composites +105%
* parts for construction of a serial well -15%
* reduced time spent on pathfinding by personnel
* corrected fall when character path is interrupted
* fixed staff chair selection if others are blocked
* allowed to divide a room with furniture by a door by 2
* when assigning personnel, checks for specialties that cannot be selected are hidden
* biowaste production reduced by 4 times
* fixed dock shifting on station
* fixed display of resource shortage if <1
* no crises for explored resources
+ explorable resources added to contracts
* refrigerators are available without building a workshop
* fuel consumption by the thermonuclear rector has been reduced by 4 times
* Iron deposits on Mars are reduced by half
* nuclear reactor power generation increased by 2 times
* increased texture pool size
* texture pool size increased to 3.5GB
+ a message about the deterioration of relations with the faction
* farms are available after the corridor, and the cafe after the apartments
* depending on the orientation of the camera in space - do not use automatic vertical alignment
* fixed turning off light at small miner of hard fossils
* when saving game from autosave offer to save by profile name
* fixed a crash when saving shuttles
- deleted duplicate object in the corridor
+ disabled interface animation in game options
- disabled modal dialog animations
* farm and kitchens are available after the robot maintenance room
* fixed English, French, Japanese and Portuguese localizations
* fixed the unreachability of some objects immediately after loading the colony
* fixed falling when moving tourists

Hello!

Patch 0.91 is now live!

In this patch we mainly focused on optimizing the game in three aspects:

• Game performance;
  
• Bandwith and latency;
  
• Server performance

Our team worked hard to deliver those changes as fast as they can, cause we know how important it is not only for us but mostly for you.

Moreover, we’ve fixed some problems that caused crashes and made changes in terms of the game itself i.e by increasing inventory size in backpack from 2 to 4, and by adding a map marker after player death.

Additionally from now, whenever a patch will be released, a pop-up in the main menu, that informs about required game update will appear.

1. Game performance optimization (UI, Animations, Items, Level Streaming, Geometry, Level Art, Lighting, Distance Culling )
   
2. Bandwidth and latency optimization (AI movement, Items, Ability System, Workstation, Weeds)
   
3. Server performance optimization (AI movement and decision making, Evolution, Items Spawn)
   
4. Added main menu popup, that informs about required game update
   
5. Added tooltip for lobby rank
   
6. Updated Arm Device Inventory tooltip
   
7. Updated ast style for UI sliders, dropdown, checkboxes, lobby mission selection and mute/unmute buttons
   
8. Updated enemy and weed burning effect VFX
   
9. Increased number of items in inventory from 2 to 4
   
10. Fix typos in input settings
    
11. Added tutorial video for Heavy Items.
    
12. Turned off spider's jump attack in first two tutorials.
    
13. Added capsule randomization for Find Data Disc mission
    
14. Added map marker after player death
    
15. Fix dead player items spawn
    
16. Fix crash when throwing an item
    
17. Added missing ledges
    
18. Automatic Unstack when player falls out into the void
    
19. Updated Starting items for Player Characters
    
20. Changed game rank calculation for games played by players of different ranks
    
21. Increased time of locking the door by using a lockpick or workstation computer
    
22. Decreased cooldown of door management by using workstation computer
    
23. Increased mine explosion range
    
24. Increased range of Paralyzer shot
    
25. Reduced the number of throwables and loot items

As we said in the previous patch, our biggest priority right now is to bring the game to the satisfactory technical condition. Before we start implementing your suggestions, making general changes to the game, as well as adding new content, we must get rid of the bugs. We are aware that some of them spoil the game, therefore our next step is to fix them.

Your feedback is really helpful to us both in terms of problems and also suggestions, so if you have something that’s on your mind, let us know :)

At the end, we would like to thank you for all of your suggestions and reports about bugs, we really appreciate it, and we count on your feedback also in this patch :).

If you like the game and all the big changes - make sure to leave a positive review!

Until next time!



https://store.steampowered.com/app/1343620/Nemesis_Distress/

English
#############Yui##################
On July 6th, 2022, around 4:50 am in GMT+8, Yui is gone.
In the game's credit file, I moved her name from the "special thanks" section to the "in memory of" section. Goodbye.
##########Content#################
A friendly ghost named "Yui" may now randomly appear near the Queensmouth Church.
She can do something similar to the Yui we just lost, such as providing random images of kittens and puppies. (Some functions are based on 3rd party Web APIs for 2 reasons: 1, to avoid the game folders becoming super huge. 2, to avoid any copyright issues of those images.)
Some of her dialogs are not localized from English to other languages. That is intended.
Added one new playable male character variation.
简体中文
#############Yui##################
在2022年7月6日凌晨4点50分左右(GMT+8), Yui离开了我们。
我把她从游戏制作人员名单的"special thanks"中移动到了"in memory of"之中，再见了。
##########Content#################
在王后镇教堂附近加入了一个随机出现的友好的名叫Yui的幽灵。
她可以做一些和我们刚刚失去的Yui相似的事情，比如提供给我们随机的猫猫和狗狗的图片。（部分功能基于第三方的网络API。因为两个原因：1，防止游戏文件夹体积过大。2，避免使用这些图片导致的版权问题。）
她的部分对白没有从英语本地化到其它语言，这是故意的。
新增了一种新的可用的男性角色造型。