Hi everyone, I am Captain Zuff, the newly appointed community manager for Mafi Games and I am excited to present the 27th edition of the Captain’s diary which is about the latest update and fan art contest! Let’s get started.

Note: Full patch notes are at the end of this update.

Today we’ve launched a larger update v0.4.8 which is a little special because it’s the first update that was published to the experimental branch a few days in advance. Many curious players have already tested it and this gives us more confidence that there are no new issues.

We will keep this pattern of publishing larger patches to the experimental branch in the future so if you are interested in having new features and fixes earlier at the cost of a slightly less stable game, feel free to join! Saves are always compatible going from lower to higher versions, but not the other way around. It is always safe to go from main to experimental branch, but if you’d like to leave the experimental branch and keep your save, you can only do so if the game version in the main branch has caught up with experimental and is the same.


You can join the experimental branch by choosing “experimental” under “betas” in the game settings.

We’ve Added a new option to discard products from the shipyard. This was a highly requested feature as some people were finding their shipyards overflowing with items not needed anymore. Also, a shipyard overloaded with cargo cannot offload cargo on your ship.


Now you can remove any item (besides waste products) from your shipyard instantly with a click.


Side by side comparison of the old and new dumping logic.

We fixed multiple more issues with dumping:

• Faster rejection of unreachable designations.
  
• Trucks will not give up on searching a valid place for dumping until all possible places are tested.
  
• Trucks will no longer break building assignment rules when the initial dumping was interrupted.
  
• Fixed issues where large dump trucks could not reach dumping designations because of their size.

We know that the dumping of excess material on terrain can be frustrating at times. Especially when a truck is not dumping and there is no indication why. To improve this, more helpful job statuses in the truck inspector window are now shown, and when a stuck truck is selected, there are new visual indicators pointing to designations that are unreachable.

Additionally, all vehicles now show their goal when navigating.


Notice the new truck job description and unreachable designations marked by the orange lines.


This can be used on Tree Harvesters as well!


Quickly build up that queue!


Aaaaand it's gone, just like that!


Less repetitive and looks more like a landfill!

Open up your MS Paint, Gimp, Photoshop, or use real-life art supplies and show us what you got! Win a COI Supporter Edition for you or a friend, as well as our awesome soundtrack! Plus a COI T-Shirt once available (by the end of the year).

1. Submit a fan art (drawing, meme, etc.) with COI theme to #fan-art channel on our Discord server
   
2. Art must be your original creation
   
3. Submissions are open until Sunday the 24th
   
4. We will announce winners in the next edition of Captain’s diary.

And for some inspiration, take a look at this awesome watercolor painting made by a friend of Captain Marek a few months ago!

Excavator during sunset in watercolor by Kejia Cao

Greetings! It's been some time so we wanted to give an update as to what we've been working on. Today we'll be looking specifically at fluids and how they interact with the painting process, but first...

We've been working hard on the game and making great progress. We want to release the game for Early Access in just a few months! That may be some time to wait so there will be some things to look forward to leading up till then.

Firstly, we'll be updating the demo before our release to bring it in line with what the game will be like to play. Secondly, we'll be resuming our developer streams closer to release to show off what we have added, talk about our process, and just play the game and have fun. And of course there will be continued updates on all our social media platforms.

We hope you are as excited as we are! If you want to help us out you can wishlist the game on Steam, if you haven't already, and show the game to your friends! Now with that out of the way, on to the rest of the blog!

As much as I wanted to break paint and fluids into different sections they are so intertwined at this point that I can't talk about one without mentioning the other. We've overhauled pretty much everything about them from how they are defined to how they are applied. We've completely changed how paint is rendered and generated. Before, each liquid was it's own distinct material which was limiting in what we could do with it beyond changing its color. Now a substance's properties are broken up into several categories that determine how that substance presents and behaves.


⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀    Left to right: Brown paint, bean juice, axel grease.

The new custom fluid creation system allows us to change how the substance appears. We can have substances that are very shiny, like the axel grease, or matte like normal paint. Reminder that this is all a work in progress and things will still be changing.

Not only does this allow us to make more kinds of liquids that do different things, but it also allows you, the player, to mix entirely different liquids together to get a unique combination of properties. Which brings us to our next topic...

While the new system allows us to change how the substance appears, that isn't all it does. We can also change how the paint behaves. Paints can vary on their viscosity (or how runny they are) and saponacity (or how soap like it is). A paint that is globby will form smaller puddles when poured and be fairly easy to paint with. A runny paint will drip down the canvas, run further across the floor when poured, and be generally much more difficult to use.




And here is a comparison of axel grease before and after our liquid rework.


⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Look at that shine!


NO! Painting is the focal point of our game so we'll constantly be refining and tweaking things. The next goal for painting is to make it more smooth and precise. We've already ironed out some bugs where the brush would paint before reaching the center cursor which made making dots impossible. Next we are looking into making the brush paint in smooth strokes. Currently brushes feel like they skip off the canvas and make dotted lines.

That's it for now! Thank you for reading! Check back here for more blog posts and news or follow us on Twitter for immediate updates!

Rescue Operation Center reports on the completely new equipment: the "Necrosmith" program 💀



It’s a necromancer simulator. Skeletons, zombies, orcs, harpies, elementals, and even robots! Combine the body parts with the appropriate characteristics and attacks to find the perfect combination of survivability, speed, and combat power. Build necro labs to grow body parts and make techno-magic devices to upgrade your army of the dead. Guide your hordes of the undead through more than a dozen biomes to find the keys to escape from this strange world!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1949190/Necrosmith/
Save 10% on Necrosmith until July 21st! We'll be extremely happy if you support the game, and most importantly, share your impressions of it 💙

Greetings general..
we got your issue and we will send you reinforcement fix update for 21:9 resolution screen
good luck for your war

Where or where could GM Raiden be? Find him for K-Ching!

• GM Raiden will be hiding in-game in one of the towns and it’s your job to find him and take a screenie!
  
• You need to be close to GM Raiden when taking screenshot.
  
• Post the screenshot with the hashtag #Elsword #HideandSeek on your preferred SNS (Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram).
  
• Even is only available to INT and NA server players.
  
• In-game announcements will be used to alert players that GM Raiden is currently hiding somewhere in the game for each server.
  
• Your SNS post must be open to public and you must include your server and IGN.

INT Server
Thursday 7/14/2022 - 3:00 PM PDT to 4:00 PM PDT
Friday 7/15/2022 - 3:00 PM PDT to 4:00 PM PDT
Saturday 7/16/2022 - 3:00 PM PDT to 4:00 PM PDT

NA Server
Thursday 7/14/2022 - 5:00 PM PDT to 6:00 PM PDT
Friday 7/15/2022 - 5:00 PM PDT to 6:00 PM PDT
Saturday 7/16/2022 - 5:00 PM PDT to 6:00 PM PDT


20 winners per day will win 500 K-Ching each!


Check out our other Summer Community Events here!
https://elsword.koggames.com/elsword-summer-community-events/

=== Summer Balance Update ===

- Many UI improvements.
- Optimized world map performance.
- Optimized blocks shader and damage computation.

Detailed patch notes can be found in the new commander profile options in the top left corner.

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!

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!

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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!

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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.

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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

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1165530/Heavy_Duty_Challenge/

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/

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.

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.


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.

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