Hello again, farmers
If you missed my last post, go read it now!
I covered:

• What's coming in the next Savannah dungeon floor update
  
• Hints on an entirely new dungeon zone
  
• Talk about improvements, fixes, major story events and more
  
• Preview images inside

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1223750/view/3326486390777794406



What's good?
For your informative entertainment, i've generated a timelapse video of our programmers - past & present - working on the project over the years.
This video also contains some unreleased music from the game, composed by our very own Cilantro.
https://youtu.be/SJmszJW-JbQ

What's been happening since the last major update?

• The hefty Savannah Floor 8 is currently having the finishing touches applied before it enters internal review
  
• Assuming review goes well, the new dungeon area will be playable very soon™ indeed.
  
• This area will also include a couple of new unique consumable items - including one that can grant a monster of your choosing the pink 'Mermaid' palette

• Programming work on combat ability levels are underway
  
• Players will be able to gain a 'rank up' for their ability skills at a rate of one rank per level, to spend on an ability belonging to that unit
  
• Rank levels include a range of combat boosts from extra damage, strong DOTs, multi-target hits and sometimes transforming the effect of a unit's attack entirely
  
• Putting the 'cloud' in Cloud Meadow, the pending skybox improvements will become a more vibrant, living & breathing backdrop for the animated world of Cloud Meadow
  
• Clouds that move, responds to changes in weather and breathes some life into the world
  
• Also frees up some texture memory

Behind-the-scenes:

• Working hard on refactoring the existing quest system
  
• This is perhaps the single most essential framework improvement to support content-driven development for the rest of the game's lifespan
  
• We know that have a main town full of NPCs that don't quite feel alive, a farm that players are often confused by & a dungeon that updates too infrequently to be the main focus of the game's content
  
• However, once we've got this out of the gate, we can begin properly transforming Cloud Meadow into the more immersive & compelling experience we intended it to be

What else are you working on? How about...

• In case you missed it, check out our version 1.0 feature roadmap - we'll keep updating it as stuff gets done [ [url=https://www.cloudmeadowgame.com/road-map/]https://www.cloudmeadowgame.com/road-map/

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I'll keep making these public posts at regular intervals, you'll get to hear about it

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If you have any questions we are always readily available in the following places:

• Introduce yourself in our very own Discord [ [url=https://discord.gg/6ASAxDF]https://discord.gg/6ASAxDF

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Drop in on our Livestream where Artists, animators & programmers work daily on Piczel [ [url=https://piczel.tv/watch/Spurple]https://piczel.tv/watch/Spurple

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"Gigantic Octopus Invasion", a new RAID battle that can be challenged by 8 players at most, has been added to the ongoing Summer Event!


You can challenge it from the wormhole in "Saltau's Beach"!

A second party can enter the battle after the first party enters the battle field.
Please note that the second party has to enter within a certain period of time after the battle begins, and there has to be a certain amount of boss monster's HP remaining for the second party to be able to join.

Defeat the "Gigantic Octopus" to get new equipment that is perfect for this hot summer and "Big Takoyaki" which is a buff item to enhance your stats!

Enjoy the hot RAID battle with your friends and guild mates!

From: 8/10/2022 after the maintenance
Until: 9/8/2022 before the maintenance

*The matching for RAID Battle can be enabled/disabled.
*When another party is joining the battle, the party members' HP will show up as a whole on the left side of the screen as "Secondary Party".
*The result rewards such as Attacker and Breaker will be defined in each party.
*Skills that affect party members such as the Support Skill "High Cycle" and Shield Skill "Guardian" will only affect the members in your party during the RAID Battle.
However, skills that can be used on a selected player such as the Support Skill "Heal" and "Recovery" can also be used on the player that is in another party.
*The event period and rewards are subject to change.
*Limited-time events or promotions may be held again in the future on different conditions after they have ended.

We are reaching a state in development where we believe it is time to playtest this abomination creation of ours.

From the 29nd of August to the 2nd of September you will be able to playtest A Bad Game Of Football. You are welcome to report bugs to us, share your thoughts on the game, or just generally talk to the devs on our official Discord.

We suggest bringing a friend to play with, or using the super new matchmaking feature, unless you want to extensively test our bots.

Sweet Stella wants to dip her toe in academic waters! But the life of a student is a little overwhelming for our shy country girl...

You can hold her hand while checks whether she has the grit for it!
Bring something to mark a solo cup, because you two are going to a college party!

Play the Animated Tapping Event to see Stella Gone Wild!




The Stella Animated Tapping is live Aug 10th - 21st.

Keep in mind that this is a high difficulty type of event. Not many will complete it until the end, but every time you unlock the next stage, you will receive resources that you can use in the main game!

How to play a Booty Farm Animated Tapping Event:

• click on the event icon in the top right corner
  
• Tap tap tap on the girl!
  
• Raise your Passion level for more powerful taps!
  
• Collect stage rewards every time you complete the meter

Earn story beats and photos on lvls 3, 6, 10, and 15.
Save animations to your gallery on lvls 9, 12, and 15.

Truck orders are not affected by the Tapping event, so if you have a purchased DLC, this is a moment for you to complete it in peace. :)

Have fun!

Realmers!

It has been a while since we asked you to show us your best Art Skills. We already receive several new cool things every week on our social media channels so why not turn this into a little competition?

Starting from the 10th of August until the 7th of September you will be able to show us your best and greatest Skills when it comes to creating Art! This can be anything from drawing something nice to baking cookies. The only and most important rule is, it has to be Realm of the Mad God related. We are not going to judge or include cosplay in this competition.

• Rank 1: Skin of choice* - 8000g - 3x Apple of Extreme Maxening
  
• Rank 2: Skin of choice* - 6000g - 2x Apple of Extreme Maxening
  
• Rank 3: Skin of choice* - 4000g - 1x Apple of Extreme Maxening
  
• Rank 4: Pet Skin of choice* - 2000g
  
• Rank 5: Pet Skin of choice* - 1500g
  
• Rank 6-10: 2 Candy of Choice - 1000g
  
• Bonus: Random Winner picked from all entries: 1000g

To make sure everyone has a chance of winning even if you are not blessed with creating Art, we will pick 1 random winner from all entries.

*You can choose from skins that are obtainable from the shop.

To submit something, please follow this Link to Google Forms. You will need to provide us with your IGN and a link to your Art.

Some basic rules:
1: You have to own the copyright for the Art.
2: Anything sent in after the 7th of September won’t be included in the competition.
3: By sending in your Art you allow us to highlight it on our social media channels.
4: DECA can remove any entries if they violate our ToS or Age Rating.

+ + + + ALLIANCE LEAGUE + + + +

In case you've been living under a Carrier, today we've been dedicating the day to Discord, with a flood of Community Managers taking the front to give you maps, and entertainment. Antarctica and Able Archer will be open for the Discord-republic for a limited time. The keen eyed of you also should have seen that we officially announced collaboration with the Alliance League. Today, I am also happy to further announce details of the League - without further ado:

DATE: 

The CON League has a tentative start date for November 2022 for the upcoming Season.

IS MY ALLIANCE READY?

The CON League tries to include all Alliances possible in its organized events. However, proper competition requires Alliances to have certain prerequisites to join in the Seasonal competition. These include:

1. A minimum of 7 players within the Alliance (less than 7 is eligible to join the Beginner's Circuit, but not the Seasonal competition)
2. Have played Alliance Matches within the last 6 months (in order to determine if they understand how Alliance Matches work)
3. Have the player capacity to participate in Elite Matches (enough players with the rank 25+)

HOW TO APPLY:

The CON League is open for all Alliances to apply. They only need to fill out a Dyno Form which submits their application directly to the League server to be reviewed. Here is a copy of the Form: https://dyno.gg/form/e9d3358f. Alliances can also find the League directly in the League server, if they are already on the server.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Alliances participating in the CoN League receive points when they defeat another alliance, allowing them to move up in the rankings of their particular division. The more you win, the more points you will score as the season goes on.At the end of the Season, the top two Alliances move up to the next Division, while the bottom two Alliances drop down to a lower Division. This system is in effect in order to naturally move Alliances based on their skill, performance and ability.

PRIZES

Prizes for the CON League is thanks to our wonderful association and partnership with the parent company Dorado. The prize for the top Alliances in the Seasonal competition includes the choice of whatever Season badge that they desire. Possible future prizes are in discussion.

 MISC.

Alliances participating within the CON League have the ability to negotiate with their opponent about map type and other rules in a mutually agree ruleset. The most standard map utilized within the League is the MED map, although all other map types are available for use.

The League hosts occasional tournaments, Battle Royales, and roleplaying games. The League is officially open for outside organizations/individuals, regardless of membership status within the League, to partner with the League to host their own tournament, BR, or RP. Details of the Tourney/BR/RP would be regulated by League rules/regulations, and would be monitored for quality assurance. This allows those who have trouble running their own special events have an outlet, and it allows the League to further nurture the Community and expand its outreach.

Hi there, Bravelanders!

For all of you waiting for Knights of Braveland, we've got some good news - we'll start sending out the pre-alpha version before the end of August! However, there's also a spoon of tar in a barrel of honey. Unfortunately our Mailchimp account got deleted and we lost the addresses for sending out the pre-alpha - now we just don't know where to send the build.

If you want to get pre-alpha, you have to register by following this link: https://www.tortugateam.com/go/kob-subscribe

Wait for the email from us, and try Knights of Braveland in the forefront! Don't forget to sign up, even if you've already gave your email address to us.

Have a nice day!

In the fourth year since its initial release, Project Warlock is having its biggest year ever!

For the last couple of months, we’ve been working on the game and squashing out some of the bugs that have been troubling you. Some of them persisted for quite a long time and it wouldn’t be possible to eliminate them without your detailed help in identifying and reproducing them.

Project Warlock still receives updates (including Steam Trading Cards!), while a lot of new people keep discovering the game and playing it for the first time. And all this is happening while our team is working on a full-fledged sequel. But we’re not stopping there.

Project Warlock was and still is a passion project. It’s also what has caught the attention of legendary game designer John Romero. We’ve been in touch for some time and talking about doing something special together…

We always wanted to give PC players the chance to have something tangible and fitting for the game that evokes the old days of FPS shooters that you would buy at your local computer store and display on a shelf over your desk. That day has come and we’re happy to reveal that Buckshot Software and Romero Games have teamed up to release a special, limited PC BIG Box edition of Project Warlock!

Pre-orders for the Project Warlock - Ihet Edition are now open at The Romero Shop with shipping planned for Q4 2022.

Our limited edition Big Box will include:

• Individually numbered box
  
• Personal signatures by John Romero and Jakub Cislo
  
• Project Warlock swag bag
  
• 4 GB Custom Buckshot USB with the game
  
• Big, wall-friendly poster
  
• 3 steel pins of Project Warlock’s Formidable Foes
  
• 4 “Faces of Warlock” stickers

After the physical releases of SIGIL and Dangerous Dave, this is the first PC Big Box prepared by Romero Games for a title that wasn’t personally developed by John Romero. It’s a huge distinction and honor for the whole Buckshot team!

We hope you’ll like it too!

Combining stylish comic book style art and animation inspired by a visual concept developed by artists at VOLTA, intricate turn-based combat, and noggin’ scratching puzzles, Sunday Gold drops players into a bleak 2070s London, where crime is at an all-time high, trouble stalks the streets, and the corrupt elite are long overdue their bloody comeuppance.   



Combining classic point and click adventure gameplay with escape-room style puzzles and turn-based combat, Sunday Gold follows Frank (aka ‘The Vengeful Ex-Con’), Sally (aka ‘The Activist’), and Gavin (aka ‘The Disgruntled Ex-Employee’) as they take on mysterious billionaire CEO Kenny Hogan. Players will swap control between the unlikely trio, utilising each con’s individual talents to hack terminals, pick locks, break down doors, and take down the bad guys.  

For players wanting to give Frank, Sally, and Gavin a leg up in their latest escapade, the free-to-play prologue is now available on Steam, granting a snapshot of the debauchery and illegal activities the trio will get themselves embroiled in at launch. 



 
Sunday Gold Key Features:  

1. Atmospheric action: Immersed in the gritty and unwelcoming world of a dystopian near-future London, Sunday Gold’s story takes players into the seedy underbelly of the corrupt elite, where secrets are hidden behind every locked door.
      
   
2. Stylish turn-based combat: Comic book inspired sequences, specific skills, attacks, and talent trees, along with as many stolen items the trio can get their thievin’ hands on, make for a unique turn-based combat experience.
   
   
3. Noggin’ scratching puzzles: Explore each room and solve a combination of observation, deduction, and inventory puzzles; hunt for clues, hack terminals, and even bust down a door (or two).
   
   
4. Keep your cool: In the face of dead bodies, cybernetic dogs, and psychotic billionaires even the most hardened criminals will start to lose their cool – maintaining the team’s composure with consumables and specific abilities will be key to mission success.
   
   
5. A trio of trouble: Frank, Sally, and Gavin make for unusual comrades, but without each of their unique abilities to lock pick, hack, and rip things open with their bare hands, the mission is doomed to fail.

Sunday Gold is now available to Wishlist on Steam, and you can keep up to date with all the information by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter, joining us on Discord, or checking out the Sunday Gold website.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1969440/Sunday_Gold/

Greetings all!

Welcome back to today’s feature dev diary on a series of interconnected subsystems being added to the game in By Blood Alone.

One of the major points in my first roadmap dev diary was that I felt quite strongly about the inclusion of further roleplay and immersive elements in Hearts of Iron. What I’ll be showing off today is intended to fulfill a small part of this bullet point.

Those of you with keen memories will recall an early teaser I posted here. Some of you guessed correctly, and in BBA, we’ve introduced a dynamic system for naming battleplans. For many major nations, battleplan names can be provided through a list of locations, resulting in a historical series of operation tags which will be applied when plans are created:​


Of course, the war does not always proceed historically, and battleplan names can also be generated from several component lists for instances where a historical variant cannot be found. These name lists are fully moddable, and can be unique to countries. In some cases (ie; Soviet Union) a different naming convention can be utilized to represent the somewhat uninventive approach to naming operations that was used in reality:


Naturally, in the spirit of roleplaying, these operation names can be modified in-game, and you can replace the text with whatever operation name you desire. This will apply to any sub-orders derived from the initial drawn line:


If unset, naval landing and paradrop orders will have a unique pattern to remain unique.

This system however, goes further than a simple naming convention, and ties into another addition being made to BBA.



In BBA, we’re replacing the standard method of recruiting new generals out of thin air. Instead, every division will be created with a commanding officer upon game start, or when they are trained:


These are predominantly generated from country-specific namelists, however in some cases we have set these individually for starting divisions. When a new unit is created, they will be provided a randomly generated character name and portrait. To accommodate the increased use of generic portraits for these, we’ll be adding a large quantity of additional generic portraits for owners of BBA. The work involved in creating these is not insignificant, so for now we’ve limited ourselves in adding portraits to major nations only.

You’ll be able to get an overview of all division commanders in your army within the officer corps screen:


In an effort to avoid unnecessary micromanagement, we’ve made a few important decisions. Division commanders themselves will not directly confer bonuses upon the divisions they command, however the divisions they command will now earn and log a record of important actions they may perform during the natural course of a campaign:


Important actions such as taking a capital, securing a high-value victory point, and more, constitute actions for which a unit can be awarded a medal. It is expected that over the course of a campaign, many units will qualify for receiving medals, often several - the system is not driven by scarcity, as we do not intend for players to micromanage individual actions, rather to manage the macro-level step of choosing when and what to award their units.


As mentioned above, division commanders will not explicitly confer bonuses, however the medals awarded for action will. Medals are intended to act as a pp sink for the mid-late game, as we find a lot of players tend to end up with a significant amount of this resource as decisions, advisors and focuses begin to dwindle.

Units can receive multiple medals, however the cost for each will increase as more are granted to any given unit, and the effect of stacking specific medals will decrease per instance of the same effect.

As you will note above, medals can be specific to countries, and we’ve included a series of generic medals based on alignment, as well as unique medal sets for each major country. A medal’s effects will only extend to the unit it belongs to.

A medal’s name and description will in most cases be dynamic depending on what action it was awarded for, and extreme valor while on a specific named operation can also result in receiving a medal for that action.

To further streamline the process of awarding medals, you can perform quick actions to do this through the officers entry in the corps screen:


As mentioned previously, we’re removing the old method of recruiting generals by means of reaching into the void and plucking out a fully qualified officer. This means that your army generals will now be directly linked to your field of divisional officers, and their capability directly linked to their actions in the field.

Divisional officers will store experience based on the experience gain of the unit they are commanding, as well as receiving a lump-sum when a medal is awarded. While active as a divisional officer, this experience will have no meaningful effect, however, when in need of a new army general, you can promote divisional commanders out of their divisional role and directly into their new role as a general.

Any medals awarded to the division will be retained by that division, however, the newly created general will keep a reference to their awarded medals as a means of remembering their accomplishments in the line of duty (albeit with no direct effect on their new army - although we’ve elected to support this behavior for modders should they wish):


When a divisional officer is promoted this way, the experience they have earned during the course of their field command will be applied to their experience level as a general (up to a maximum cap). Promoting someone with field experience can prove a lot more valuable than hiring another pen-pusher, after all. If they have earned at least a certain quantity (as yet undecided) of field experience, they will also begin with a personality trait corresponding to the type of division they were commanding (armor officer, infantry officer, etc).



You will also note that my roadmap included a wish to improve the battle-planner. While this is likely to be a slow, iterative process, BBA heralds the inclusion of a new frontline parameter intended for advanced users.


The Cohesion parameter can be set on any root frontline order, and will affect how the unit controller places divisions across that frontline. The default setting of ‘Flexible Cohesion’ functions as you have grown to expect - all units will be evaluated for placement suitability and potentially relocated to fill perceived gaps in frontline cohesion.


Balanced Cohesion’ will only successfully evaluate units that are within a defined distance from the target (distances are moddable). In practice, this results in less unit shuffling along frontlines, but should still ensure that frontlines respond to changes in size and shape.


The final setting, ‘Rigid Cohesion’ is intended primarily for long defensive lines, and will only successfully evaluate unit positions that are within a very short distance from the target location. In practice this results in relocations only taking place to neighboring provinces, and can result in gaps being created in frontlines if left unattended. It is expected that this setting will be used by players who primarily rely on micromanagement of frontlines.

The AI will make use of flexible and balanced cohesion settings depending on the ratio of divisions:frontline length, but will avoid the use of rigid cohesion.

It is worth noting that units that are not placed directly on the frontline (having been left behind or recently added to an order instance) will not be subject to the same cohesion restrictions, and will make use of strategic relocation to find themselves a new place on the frontline. Additionally, the cohesion setting will be respected regardless of whether an order is being executed or not.



For those of you interested in modding, the addition of these subsystems also comes with some new tools regarding units. It is now possible to iterate over unit arrays in states and countries by condition, and apply a series of effects, including the awarding of medals, history entries, and other basic parameters such as affecting org, strength, and more. For performance reasons, units do not currently support storing or being stored as variables, though we will monitor the need for, and performance implications of doing this in future (I SEE YOU EaW).

Predefined divisions can be set up with lists of historical commanders that they will draw from when their current commander if replaced, should you wish to opt for extreme historical fidelity.


The visual display ranks of divisional commanders correspond to their gained experience, and are fully customizable, though confer no gameplay effect.

Medals themselves can be added to the medal array based on arbitrary conditions, and support a variety of modifiers, not all of which are represented in our vanilla use-cases.


Name combinations can also be split from various random lists, if you have a particular penchant for randomly generated names.


That’s all for now, tune in next week for a second look at how peace conferences are progressing!