Phoenix Point - Snapshot_EE
It’s the final countdown, people: We’re headed towards our last update for Phoenix Point, “Hastur,” with our most requested community feature: Steam Workshop mod support.

With this final update, we’ll be opening up Steam Workshop for the community to share their creations and make it easy for any player to enable and subscribe to player-made mods. As an added feature that’s part of our mod integration, each mod can be tweaked by players to finely tune the right balance for their intended game.



To get things started on the right foot, we’re releasing an example mod alongside the Workshop launch that we’re currently calling “Custom Campaign.” This mod will demonstrate what creators can do with modding, while also allowing a greater degree of customization when it comes to kicking off your campaigns such as:
  • Tactical Difficulty: Players can now make the tactical game easier or harder, separate from the global Geoscape difficulty.
  • Mission Threat Level: Missions that leverage threat levels can be made more or less difficult
  • Human Population Census (HPC) AKA the Doomsday Clock: If the timer makes you nervous, you can set up the game so that the population drops slower or turn it off altogether, giving you more time to ready your assaults. Or, for an added challenge, you can speed it up!
  • Manufacture Speed: This allows the ability to produce items faster, slower, or instantly.
  • No Ammo: Choose to remove ammunition clips, effectively allowing all weapons to infinitely reload, which we expect may change the game pretty dramatically.
Our programming team has worked very hard to make modding work because we are excited to see what the community brings to the table for Phoenix Point - and for everybody to experience the existing mods that can now be brought over to Steam.

On a separate note: next Thursday, July 21st, we will combine all Phoenix Point content into one Complete Edition bundle on PC. If you already own Year One Edition and the Expansion Pass, don’t despair; you’re not missing out on any additional content, but for those looking to jump in for the first time or upgrade, this will be the definitive way to get all Phoenix Point content with a single purchase.

Finally, we have a few small surprises we’re saving til next Thursday’s release of Complete Edition and the free Hastur update, so still a bit more to come!
Offroad Truck Simulator: Heavy Duty Challenge® - GTB79
Welcome back, Drivers!

We are excited to share with you what we have been up to lately to ensure that Heavy Duty Challenge is as authentic as possible and has the best locations. To do this, we took a trip to Iceland for research and scanning, and another trip to France to meet with truck trial drivers!


Iceland
We made a trip to Iceland with the goal of creating scans of the rocks and terrain there as research for an upcoming level set in Iceland. Our environmental artist Marek Barski and Lead Game Designer Łukasz Pleśniarowicz took these scans.




Marek using a drone to create the scans


Łukasz on site, getting ideas and researching for the upcoming level.

The Nature in Iceland was absolutely breathtaking; it's hard to find anywhere else in the world that can compete with the landscapes we saw here. Łukasz even said it is his current favorite place in the world, which is why we will have it playable in the game!


Montalieu-Vercieu, France
We also made a trip to France with the goal of more environmental scans, truck research, sound recordings, showcasing the game, and meeting the drivers and fans!


Łukasz Basiński (artist) and Marek Barski (enviro artist)



Bartek (sound engineer) recording audio of trucks for in-game use


Driver Marcel Schoch Hardox and his son trying out Heavy Duty Challenge


The Nano Games Team in Montaileu!

The trip to France was a fantastic opportunity to experience being part of the off-road community and watching people play Heavy Duty Challenge. However, it is also crucial that we take time to watch the real-life sport to make sure HDC is as accurate as possible.


Conclusion

Thank you for joining us as we talk about our recent expeditions and joining us on the Heavy Duty Challenge journey!

Remember to join our Discord and Steam Forums if you have any ideas, suggestions, or want to say hello!

See you next time,
Nano Games



https://store.steampowered.com/app/1165530/Heavy_Duty_Challenge/
LEGO® Bricktales - Mamas_Johnny


High five, friends of the brick!

Summer is full of festivals and music. But did you know that a virtual music festival is also possible?! Let us introduce you to the Save & Sound event – a celebration of music in games!

Join us July 14 - 18 right here on Steam for one of the largest digital expos about audio and music in games. Featuring concerts, deep-dives, and mashups from 70+ developers from around the world. You can find the full schedule of livestreams on the event page.

As a part of Save & Sound there is a chat with game director Tri Do Dinh and Maximilian Stroka, the composer of LEGO Bricktales! Join them taking a deeper look at the creation process of the music for the game. Tune in on Friday (July 15) at 11am PDT / 8pom CEST to learn more!

See you their!
Your LEGO Bricktales Team


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/
Universe Sandbox - bshapiroalbert

The Moon colliding with the Earth. Made with Universe Sandbox, a product of Giant Army.

In October 2021, Giant Army, the creators of Universe Sandbox, a physics-based space simulator, officially adopted a 4-day, 8 hours a day workweek at full salary. This change has positively impacted our team, so we wanted to share how we made this decision to encourage other game studios and companies to experiment with a 4-day workweek.

Making the Decision
We started discussing a 4-day workweek after Microsoft Japan trialed it and found that it increased their productivity. Those discussions continued as we saw other companies and organizations experiment with it. In May 2021, as part of the team’s effort to reduce burnout, we decided to take Fridays off for a month.

Most of our team found that the 4-day workweek left them refreshed and just as productive, so we extended it for another month, and then another. In July 2021, we extended it through September but added one condition: you can take Friday off if you share a short daily update and screenshot summarizing what you did, Monday through Thursday.

For a fully remote team spread across multiple time zones, a quick, daily team meeting is not practical. This makes the importance of communication about progress or problems even more valuable.


A moon being ripped apart by intense gravitational forces.

Even after an extensive trial period, there was concern that a 4-day workweek would lead to reduced productivity. So why did we do it?

[h4]Support from the Team[/h4]
The team supported it. Direct quotes from our team include:

“Working a 4-day workweek for me has been a positive experience overall. I feel more organized and less stressed with both personal and work time.”

“[The 4-day workweek has led to] Fewer typos, far fewer odd little mistakes… etc. The sort of mistakes that go away when you're even 10% sharper than before, or you have less brain fade.”

[h4]Steady Progress[/h4]
While it’s difficult to quantify productivity, one would imagine that dropping a day a week would result in a drop in productivity. However, we continued to innovate and iterate on Universe Sandbox, adding new features and providing regular updates. Given the steady progress and increased happiness, switching to a 4-day workweek seemed like the right decision.

Reflections on the Change

The Sun explodes in a supernova, heating up and vaporizing the Earth.

We think adopting a 4-day workweek has been a net positive for Giant Army. The shorter week has:
  • Pushed us to optimize our time, leading to shorter and more efficient meetings
  • Improved our work environment
  • Helped us to attract candidates for our current and future open positions
There are some drawbacks to the shorter week:
  • We have a rule not to release an update right before the weekend to avoid needing to be on-call during the weekend. Previously we did not release on Fridays. Now we don’t release on Thursdays (mostly).
  • More emails and messages come in over a 3 day weekend
  • Fewer days to schedule meetings (or is this a benefit?)
The number of code commits or changes (which are not generally a good measure of productivity) made to Universe Sandbox and the number of updates we released in 2021 is similar to the previous 2 years. While our official transition wasn’t until late 2021, and these measures don’t quantify how much work went into each commit or update, they support the idea that everybody has been just as productive.

Overall, we’re happier, and progress on Universe Sandbox is steady. If you have any questions about our 4-day workweek, please contact us.

Universe Sandbox is an interactive physics-based space simulator that merges gravity, collisions, and climate to reveal the awesomeness of our universe in a whole new way. Learn more on our website.

Addendum
Here are a few more details based on the questions we’ve received about our 4-day workweek:

Q: Did we take a pay cut because we are now working 4 8-hour days instead of 5?

A: No. Everybody on our team is salaried, and nobody took a pay cut as part of this transition.

Q: Did we consider having some team members work Monday-Thursday, and some work Tuesday-Friday so there would always be somebody reachable 5 days a week?

A: We actually did the opposite and tried to make sure everybody had as much overlap as possible to maximize collaboration. That means that our team member in Australia has Mondays off instead of Fridays because they’re a day ahead of our primary work time zone (PST).

Last Updated: July 21, 2022
Black Mesa - Scorp97


Big day today, Scientists!

The Administrators are excited to announce that we are collaborating with Superboss Games, the makers of Intruder, to bring all of you to the Black Mesa facility for an exciting new event, no HEV suit required!

Coming soon, we will be hosting an epic mapmaking contest to solve the scientific problem of combining Black Mesa and Intruder together!

https://youtu.be/eLKSEyx9utg
Teaser made by SepkoSFM

Join the other scientists on Discord, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for more details on this exciting event!

Crowbar Collective x Superboss Games

https://www.instagram.com/blackmesagame/
https://twitter.com/BlackMesaDevs
https://www.facebook.com/BlackMesaDevs
https://twitter.com/SuperbossGames
https://www.facebook.com/SuperbossGames

Intruder - Silverballer


Calling all Agents!

Did you ever wonder what would happen if we combined Intruder and Black Mesa?

A new epic mapmaking adventure, obviously!


Teaser made by SepkoSFM.

Stay up to date on the latest map making news on our Facebook, Twitter, and Discord server.

Date Reveal Coming Soon!

Superboss Games x Crowbar Collective
Jul 14, 2022
Dash Rider - Sunless Planet games
Patch Notes:
- Remapping system added
- first version of game ending added
- enemies now get damaged by exploding mines
- bug fixed: mines still dealing damage after they disappeared
- various changes and bug fixes
Jul 14, 2022
Crossing Frontier 盡界戰線 (DEMO) - Beacon of Gamers
各位玩家,感謝今天大家遇到了很多我們原本沒有預期的意外,導致產生了許多BUG,於是製作組內部討論後決定利用7/15 9:00-10:00的一個小時關服維修,我們修正了幾項已發生的BUG,然後也針對米哈爾做了英雄調整。

BUG修正:
修正遊戲結束後,雙方無論如何都是勝利的錯誤
修正遊戲內UI有時沒顯示
修正收藏庫的角色頁面會重置儲存的天賦問題
修正表情輪盤的語音部分的名字顯示
修正有時買了造型卻選不到的問題
增加伺服器穩定度
名詞統一:
1.跑步→衝刺
2.衝刺→墊步
3.空中衝刺→空中墊步
4.空中墊步→空中受身迴避

英雄調整:
米哈爾:降低米哈爾爆炸箭矢的傷害以及麻痺傷害的效果。

動作調整:
墊步的無敵時間延長
Ready or Not - Kaminsky
Welcome to the 3rd in our series of monthly newsletters dedicated entirely to community creations and contributions to Ready or Not; this week, we’ll focus on popular, well-made, and unique mods to augment your gameplay!

Community Spotlight – Mods of the Month

1.) Mount Threshold Research Center by Vegriv

Following hot on the heels of our last mod newsletters shoutout of the Fairfax Residence, this time, we’d like to show off the beautiful recreation of another iconic SWAT 4 map! Mount Threshold comes off strong with claustrophobic rooms and halls, tense gunfights across side-halls, and jam-packed laboratories accented with clean textures and unique suspect skins!

Download Link: https://www.nexusmods.com/readyornot/mods/1280



2.) US Marshal Special Service Group by Taereus [Uploaded by [b]VastGameMaster[/b]]

Lowering our scope slightly, we had a clean skin made by Taereus showing off a law enforcement unit that doesn’t get a lot of representation in popular media. The clean camo pattern and Marshal iconography show the SSG in all its glory.

Download Link: https://www.nexusmods.com/readyornot/mods/1214



3.) Ready or Not - Half Life Alyx Combine Voice Mod by eckojay2192

The last of our monthly top three is a mod produced by eckojay that takes the voice lines from the iconic Half-Life series newest installment, Half Life Alyx, and applies them to our officers. All that is really missing is a skin mod; thankfully, one is available on the Nexus as well!

Download Link: https://www.nexusmods.com/readyornot/mods/762



Editors Choice

4.) Ready or Not - The Foundation by zSchloop

Showing some love for a universe that I love quite a bit, we have a set of configurable SWAT skins that rep the iconography of the SCP Foundation and their bespoke tactical units, Mobile Task Forces

Download Link: https://www.nexusmods.com/readyornot/mods/91





Going forward, we can’t wait to see what else the community brings to the table as we update the game and give modders more functionality to play with and improve their own works.

Outside of our drops, you can find more of this wonderful content here:
https://discord.gg/TjyfbXTU28 or https://www.nexusmods.com/readyornot/

If you'd like to help us test new content on the Supporter exclusive experimental branch, provide us with your game feedback, and keep up with the Supporter community, you can become a Supporter at www.voidinteractive.net or at our Steam store page.

Make sure you follow Ready or Not on Steam here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1144200/Ready_or_Not/

Jul 14, 2022
Naxos - Pixelabor
Golem achiev has been fixed!
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