Aug 2, 2022

We're leaving Early Access – but are far from done yet

Police Simulator: Patrol Officers - wladi | astragon

Fellow officers,

let me tell you one thing: The last 13 1/2 months have been incredible. It's been an extraordinary pleasure to see so many of you having fun, interacting with the community, enjoying the duties of Brighton, and providing us with extremely valuable feedback. Just take a look at our last updates which have been heavily inspired by your wishes and we’re so excited to continue on this path alongside you.

Speaking of it: Yes, you read the headline correctly. We are indeed leaving Steam Early Access soon.

Why are you leaving Early Access?

There are several reasons which all cumulated to our decision.

We initially planned to stay in Early Access for 'up to a year' – well, we're way past that point but have never actually updated the FAQ :D Now we're a bit late, but hey!

Since our release in Early Access in July 2021 we think with 6 major content updates including free-roam and multiplayer mode, more complex tasks, new vehicles and districts the game has advanced and progressed in a way where we believe finally leaving Early Access is justified.

Plus: The game will release on consoles at the same time as well (that means: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S). You won't believe how many requests we received for that, crazy to see that much hype! 💙

Is that it now? :(

No, not at all! Just to make it completely clear: This is not the end, we're far from done! Actually, we have soooo much more in store and can not wait to share all the details with you. Update 7, Update 8... and much much more are already in the works and AHHHHH I WISH I COULD JUST LEAK THEM ALL!

You could say… After Early Access, we’re continuing with the Early Access Definitive Hyper Premium Extended Edition™©℗®. With a few changes but more news about that soon.

BTW: We are still in the process of finding a proper date but we will most likely (not 100% safe!) have some information for you about both the release and new content coming in the future at gamescom. Stay tuned on that! :)

Oh, and not to forget: We are aware of a few issues which sneaked in with Update 6, especially when it comes to crashes. Our team is working on them and we plan to release a hotfix next week.

What will change once you leave Early Access?

The most important thing: We'll carry out a very first (and so far only!) price increase when we leave Early Access. The game will then cost 29.99 Euro / 24.99 GBP / 29.99 USD.

Of course, if you have already purchased the game prior to that date, you will not have to pay anything additionally to cover the gap. This seems obvious but I just want to make it clear: If you already own the game, nothing will change for you. You already own it, possess it, love it. Nothing will be taken away from you.

Should something else change, we will inform you about that in time.

A gift to our Early Access players

We can not thank you enough for your incredible support over the last few years. Seriously, even I feel personally flattered :')

On console, players who pre-order the game will receive a bonus in form of a powerful SUV – we call it the Urban Terrain Vehicle. On PC, we decided to gift this patrol car to all our existing Early Access players (= everyone who owns the game until we leave Early Access). That's just fair, you know :)

However, we don't want to make any kind of bonus content exclusive to one version or to a specific timeframe. This is why we will also offer this little bonus as a separate purchase (2.99 Euro / 2.49 GBP / 2.99 USD) to those who join us a little later!

We plan to work on additional DLC in the future which we want to offer as a way to further support the development – we're sizing up a lot of things and are thankful for every help we get, especially when it comes to feedback. Please continue doing that!

Thank you all for the support

At no point prior to release would we have expected such success and at times it felt really overwhelming. We're incredibly thankful for every single comment – be it both positive or negative – as they help us to improve and expand the game further and further.

Thank you so, so, so much for the incredible support and we can not wait for the months to come!

Yours dearly,
The entire Police Simulator Team

Aug 2, 2022

Patch Notes v1.0.12

Good Company - aayph

Hello Tycoons!

Over the past few weeks we’ve gathered a lot of feedback from you. Currently we are figuring out which items we should work on next. We’ve done a couple of technical estimations and most of the requested QoL features will require more time to be brought into the game properly.

We’ll talk more about upcoming features within the next week. Until then, we are delivering some bug fixes and smaller changes. The release as usual first on the beta branch and later this week going live for everyone.

To join the beta branch simply open the properties of the game and select the branch named ‘_latest_beta’. You can do that by right-clicking the game from your library -> properties -> betas

Enjoy your weekend!

Patch Notes 1.0.12
Beta Date: 02nd August 2022
Release Date: 04th August 2022

Changes

UI/UX: Option to search / filter courier routes
UI/UX: Clicking on an employee in the courier routes panel closes the panel and selected the employee
A Happy Workforce: Milestone 3 reworked - reduce required Happiness and target decorations
A Happy Workforce: Disable optional task in milestone 3 to reduce zone sizes
A Happy Workforce: Reduce the required different decorations for interior design achievement from 20 to 10
A Happy Workforce: Reduce the wait time for the overtime achievement from 30 days to 7 days.

Bug Fixes

General: Plastic, Metal and Wood assembler skills were corrected
UI/UX: Calculator does not longer permanently locking the keyboard
Campaign: Fixed the situation where milestones were skipped and levels behaved unexpected likely suddenly completed themself
Campaign: Achievement for completing 7 challenges did not trigger
Topple the Top: Corrected description from 1000 to 500 required bots for the last milestone
Heating Up: Correcting the equipment reset function, it actually deleted all equipment now
Heating Up: Removing false positive warnings from special pallets
Heating Up: Fixing the Triple Ace achievement
Eyes in the Sky: Correcting discrepancy between description and target amount for milestones
Money Rush: When loading a save game the challenge could not be completed anymore
Localization: Competitors now know what a medium contract case contract is called
Localization: Correcting names and descriptions of several achievements on steam

Aug 2, 2022

Honey, I Joined A Cult Peace & Love update Out now!

Honey, I Joined a Cult - JoeR247_T17

Greetings Faithful Followers ☮

We come bearing great news... Update 3 is now live! We've got a huge amount of new features and content, including our brand new Peace & Love theme. ✌🏼

See the new update trailer featuring the one and only Burt Biscuit.

New Rooms! 🏠
For starters, we have 6 brand new rooms for you to add to your compound when you choose the Peace & Love theme, including the Free Love Room, Experimental Arboretum, Maypole Dancing Room and the Special Incense Lounge to name but a few!

New Endings! 🔚
A new theme means 2 brand new endings for those peaceful and loving leaders amongst you.

New Outfits! 👗
Peace & Love has a style of it's own - dress up in our new outfits and hats to show the world just how much you care.

Night-Time rooms 🌙
Your prayers were not in vain, someone was listening. One of the biggest requests we've had from the community is for there to be more things to do at night. Now the twilight hours offer their own opportunities: we've added 3 new night-time only rooms, including the Counterfeit Goods Department, Ministry of Propaganda and Moonshine Distillery. We won't spoil exactly what these do right now but you should find them very, rewarding. Keep your eyes peeled for a new mini-game.

Tutorial and Prestige system reworks ⭐

We continue to take player feedback on board in this update, we've made changes to the Tutorial to streamline the introduction to cult life. The Prestige system has also been adjusted based on player feedback, the new Prestige Level stat should allow you to easily determine the effect of a room's prestige on your cultists.

Saving and Loading 💾
The Save and Load system has been reworked, meaning that Loading times will be much quicker, so you can get back to your Cult faster than ever! We are now fully supporting saves moving forward. We should no longer be invalidating saves between updates.

We hope that you enjoy the latest update for Honey, I Joined A Cult and look forward to seeing your thoughts on social media and in our Discord Server

Full details can be found below:

New theme added: Peace & Love

6 new rooms added.
3 new Special Characters.
2 new end games to reach.
3 new outfits.
3 new hats.
New missions for special rewards.
New objects for stealing missions.

New night-time rooms added:

3 new night-time related rooms added.
New minigame added to one new room.
These rooms are only available to work at night.
Some existing rooms are now set to daytime only.
Menu buttons that can set default work schedules now include a night-time option.
Standard tech tree expanded slightly to incorporate these new rooms.
Existing saves with a progressed tech tree can go back and research these rooms.

Tutorial Rework:

The initial tutorial has been shortened and streamlined.
Initial tutorial now includes some premade buildings to aid the streamlining process.
Parts of the tutorial now appear dynamically later in a playthrough.

Prestige Rework:

Rooms now have prestige levels in additional to a prestige value.
Prestige has been lowered on most objects.
The amount of prestige required per room for each mood threshold has also been lowered.

Build Menu Rework:

Some types of objects in the build menu such as pews or pictures have been merged and now have a colour selection button.
Added cancel button to build menu search function.

Saving and Loading:

Loading times for save games has been vastly improved.
We are now fully supporting saves moving forward. We should no longer be invalidating saves between updates.

Bug Fixes:

Fixed some leader demands / quests not triggering correctly.
Fixed some leader demands / quests not tracking correctly.
Fixed issue where “Strange” traits could be removed in the Ministry of Alteration, but their effect still occur when a cultist was removed from the cult.
Fixed mission success chance changing after it was launched if one or more of its assigned cultists had a temporary skill increase and that skill increase wore off during the mission. Mission success chances should not change once a mission is launched.
Fixed multiple dialog boxes popping up if whilst moving an object, the player right clicked multiple times.
Fixed the “Clear” button on cultist priority menus that would set rooms to ignore instead of clearing them.
Fixed hospitality room skill tooltips showed skills showing as “Not Loaded”.
Fixed endgame screens showing sidebar menus under certain conditions.
Fixed FPS drop when viewing an endgame rooms room sidebar menu.
Fixed a room sidebar menu occasionally closing when placing an item down from the build menu.
Fixed incorrect statue text when a Follower left a cult due to being insulted or attacked.
Fixed Divine Inspiration menu sound sometimes being louder than intended.
Fixed Divine Inspiration menu sometimes displaying “Leader Sanctum Error” by mistake.
Fixed Kitchen menu order tab missing sounds.
Fixed untended interactions between Divine Inspirations menu and the Missions menu.
Fixed exclamation mark sometimes appearing on the build menu when no new objects were present.
Fixed room sidebar menu showing tooltips for objects that were scrolled off the end of the menu.
Fixed short range of light sources for the “Scared of the Dark” quirk.

Localisation:

Fixed many typos.
Fixed many missing references.
Fixed many incorrect references.
Fixed many incorrect translations.

Please continue to report any issues you experience (crashes, bugs, etc) in our Report A Problem forum, or to our team via email: help@team17support.com

Make sure you also follow us on Twitter and come join your fellow Cult Leaders in our Discord Server for feedback and discussion of your favourite parts of this new Update!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/841190/Honey_I_Joined_a_Cult/

Aug 2, 2022

Vol.1 Physics and Dynamic Movement

LONN - matt

Hey everyone!

We're back with the latest edition of LCU (LONN Community Update).

This week we're discussing our Kinesis Physics System.

From the very beginning...a long time ago...we decided on developing core systems that allowed for player freedom in a virtual world. We didn’t want hands to go through walls, enemies to be interacted with in one way only or for exploration to be teleport based. We wanted the experience to be immersive and for the player to feel presence; accepting the virtual world as real.

We’ve developed a core system built on physics for the player, enemies, world and objects in LONN. This allows all gameplay systems to connect and work together simultaneously.

If you run into an enemy and see an object in the world. Grab, throw and hit them with it
if you see a fence with a lock, try climb over it or use a dagger or crowbar to break it
if you run out of ammo, grab your rifle with both hands, knock your enemy to the ground and finish them off
if you want to be stealthy instead of being all out attack, go for it...
if you want to use a baseball bat and an enemies shield, instead of a sword and dust bin lid..you can

The list goes on....there's endless possibilities that grow into more complex gameplay scenarios.

The Kinesis Physics System is what we call the underlying system that links all of our gameplay together: Player Character; AI; Environment Interactions; and Objects.

With this core, each level is ridiculously fun to play in. You can do lots of things in each space while playing the campaign and experiencing the story in your own unique way.

Player dynamic movement

You can run, jump, climb, mantle, grab, push, pull, punch, crouch...using parkour you can traverse obstacles whichever way you choose. Take out two enemies, then jump over to the small platform on the left before jumping back and grabbing the tiny ledge. It should be next to a big pipe that’s snaking up the wall. Climb up the pipe and turn back on yourself to see the next platform in front of you. Leap onto it, then jump across the gap to then mantle on the other side.....you get the idea! There's many game modes in LONN including parkour and time trials.

LONN is playable from start to finish (logo to credits) and we can't wait for you to play it soon!

Have a great week,

Dan, Matt and Sanjay
SixSense Studios