Player damage has been regulated

Happy Friday Neighbors!
We’ve teamed up with Versus Evil to bring you a surprise crossover!

During this event, players can jump into the Eville Beta August 22nd through September 5th and unlock the Mr. Peterson avatar! Once the event is over he will return to Raven Brooks to prepare for the Hello Neighbor 2 launch coming Dec 6th. Be sure to sign up for the Eville Beta so you don't miss him!



While we're on the subject of our long awaited launch, dont forget that every HN2 pre-order comes with instant beta access, and our Deluxe edition's got a few wicked extras as well!

The Hello Neighbor 2 Standard Edition pre-order will contain the full game on launch + instant Beta access once your pre-order is completed. While the Deluxe Edition comes with Instant Beta access, 3 brand new DLC available on launch, and 5 days of Early Access to the game prior to its full release on December 6th, 2022!
See here for additional Hello Neighbor 2 Pre-Order options

See you next time!



Follow us on social media:

• Discord
  
• Facebook
  
• Twitter
  
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1321680/Hello_Neighbor_2/

Not too much in terms of exciting updates this week! A lot (almost all) of my time this week was spent on bug fixes and optimizations for the upcoming testing! (:

I figured I could show what some skills look like when you turn off the third person camera change. For those of you who want a *fully* first person experience! It's not perfect, but definitely manageable.

Also, I made it so if you stack the "Dizzy" and "Bleeding" status effects, it can cause enemies to fall unconscious, which is hilarious and super overpowered at the moment lol


Other than that, I mostly just did boring ol' bug fixes, UI cleanup, and various optimizations. To tide you over 'till next week, heres a few videos of me killin' a few gobs!

If you're interested in trying to take part in testing, be sure to be active in the various Bloodline social media pages!

• fixed cupboards in the walls in portal 7
  
• removed stone that prevented smooth walking in portal 3
  
• fixed that an item with a key could spawn not on the floor (above door arc) in portal 2
  
• there won't be hints about entering the portals if the portal is not active
  
• in portals 17-18 additional enemies will be spawn if you haven't finished the necessary amount yet
  
• fixed that achievement "I know them all" could granted without 1 enemy
  
• in portal 6 fixed that bargests at the far end of the Cemetery couldn't chase you
  
• fixed that damage didn't apply to the objects right before the player
  
• rebalanced weapon price

Hi guys. This is an update with some fixes and minor changes, but the most important thing is the new in-game bug reporter! You can open it by pressing F7 and it allows you to easily report bugs directly to the discord!



Changes:
Added in-game bug reporter. Press F7 to open
Added skill rune to Crag Peak
Improved Storehouse model
Added a warning when creating your player/creature if you haven't named them
Improved throwing and made it work better with different screen sizes
Allowed camera to zoom further out
Added fade to player hand when too close to camera
Modified tornado behavior
Added realtime reflections setting
Added realtime reflections to quest markers
Added realtime reflections to evil crystals
Improved anti-influence spheres
Updated building icons
Bug Fixes:
Fixed broken skill rune in Rota
Fixed buildings casting shadows on self
Added failsafes for handing/taking objects to/from creature
Fixed creature miracle actions not saving properly
Fixed creature crystal not loading if creature was dead when saving
Fixed ents overtaking the world
Fixed assigning villager as farmer forcing you to harvest field

Greetings Survivors and welcome to another edition of the Community Crunch!

The ARK team and your cheery robot-AI guide, HLN-A, will be at PAX West ARK Booth #325 (Main Floor - Level 4) from September 2nd through September 5th! While #PAXRex and #PAXRaptor hibernate, we're bringing a well-known companion to help us navigate the PAX event floor! A real life-sized version of HLN-A, complete with an incredible holographic display-face, will be in attendance to interact directly with ARK survivors – so whatever burning questions or comments you’ve always wanted to ask her, this is your chance!

Also, survivors will get their first chance to play ARK: Ultimate Survivor Edition on Nintendo Switch, developed by Grove Street Games. This completely rehauled version of ARK will include enhancements and upgrades to bring it into line, visually and functionally, with the experience on Xbox One and PS4 – ultimately including all of its Expansion Packs, starting with Scorched Earth at PAX – and launching with a new game mode featuring our loving AI-companion HLN-A as they players through ARK in a low-pressure, kid-friendly, dino-fact-filled adventure in a special mode called "ARK: Dinosaur Discovery"!

If you're planning on attending, don't miss out on a chance to grab some exclusive ARK giveaways and get a firsthand demo of ARK: Ultimate Survivor Edition on Nintendo Switch!



This month’s Wildcard cause was chosen in honor of members of our community who have been impacted by cancer. Many of our players are young adults - we're passionate about giving back to our community and we’ve opted to support a charity that focuses on that age group.

Today cancer is the leading terminal disease amongst 20 to 39 year-olds in the United States.

Despite advances in early detection, treatment, and prevention, there’s been no improvement within the last 30 years in survival rates for this particular age group — and in fact, the gap between the survival rates of young adults and those of cancer patients in other age groups is widening.

We believe technology and entertainment can help to bring people together and that gaming can be advantageous in terms of recovery and in coping during treatment:

Studies have also been conducted and show patient empowerment has been increased with the use of video games (Caldwell, et al 2013) Govender et al (2015) also found these benefits with cancer patients in particular, The researchers go to state “Empowerment interventions may enhance patients’ internal locus of control, resilience, coping skills, and self-management of symptoms related to disease and therapy.”

Cancer patients can commonly suffer with a phenomena known as “chemo brain”, where cognitive functioning is impacted (Simó, Rifà-Ros, Rodriguez-Fornells, & Bruna, 2013) video games have been proven to increase working memory, problem solving, spatial awareness and eye hand coordination and executive control functions (Hall et al, 2012; Shin, et al 2015, Adachi, & Willoughby, 2013).

With respect to our players battling cancer, we’ve donated to the Ulman Foundation, a charity that creates a community of support for young adults and their loved ones.

https://ulmanfoundation.org/




There is an ongoing EVO event until 1 PM Pacific, on August 22nd. You can find the rates below:

*Note that these bonuses are multiplicative of the game's standard 1x rates.

• Official Servers: 2x XP, Harvesting, Taming, and Breeding (imprint, maturation, hatch/gestation), 0.5x Mating Interval
  
• Small Tribe Servers: 4.5x XP, Harvesting, Taming, 4x Breeding (imprint, maturation, hatch/gestation), 0.5x Mating Interval
  
• ARKpocalypse: 5x XP, Harvesting, Taming, and Breeding (imprint, maturation, hatch/gestation), 0.5x Mating Interval
  
• Conquest: 5x XP, Harvesting, Taming, and Breeding (imprint, maturation, hatch/gestation), 0.5x Mating Interval

For the duration of this EVO Event, we will be disabling the world buffs from Baby Boon & Maewing Poach on Genesis Part 2 on the Official Network. In the past, we've adjusted for the impact events have had on the rates by tweaking the bonuses that we use during breeding events, however, those tweaks lead to unfavorable circumstances on maps that aren't Genesis Part 2, so during breeding events, we'll be disabling these mission buffs specifically as not to affect the bonuses on other maps.


Fan Art Gallery | Screenshot Gallery | Artist Feedback Form


Brian™#6436

Was doing a red drop on Extinction. Hit E. Fell off giga. Chased giga around amid wyverns and enraged triceratops. Latter killed me. Giga ate the rest. Got giga. Went to public TP. Person who built it didn't fill in the gap underneath. Got trapped. Died again. Got my stuff back again. Danced with my corpse because this time there was a corpse left to dance with.

Just another day, really.

Creator: Camway Gaming
Camway Gaming walks through some tips that even the most seasoned ARK survivors may find useful!


Creator: Neebs Gaming
Check out the latest episode in Neebs Gaming "Ark: Noobs Vs Alpha Tribe" series



Untitled by gnose_#6945


ARK Genesis by InmagineThat


Top Of the Winds by @Rex_2_


ARK x Synapsida by @falco_luna


Deinonychus by @rianeko_mabi


Fenrir by @sarekoube1


Untitled by @sis_6193


Whistle the Managarmr by StarMew27#2125


Teen Yuty Fanart by 恐鳥#5783



Threepwood#4646


Ari the Adventurer#1243


Katt Farrell#0928


See you next week!
Studio Wildcard

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Discord: discord.com/invite/playark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Official Wiki: ark.wiki.gg

Stunning visual effects, next-gen graphics and a whole another dimension to discover and experience. Get ready for a rollercoaster of emotions and enjoy this unique adventure!

Sometimes it is hard to describe with words, so here are some images of our game!












Lost Beyond is launching in December, with a 25% discount on launch!

For more information about the game, check out our storepage, and make sure to add to your wishlist to stay updated!


We hope you enjoy our game as much as we did making it!

No longer are the games going to be silent! The current system has a unique song for each map, it may change in the future.

Lift & Acceleration Cannon Sounds

The lift and acceleration cannons got some nice punchy sound effects!

Bots Can Use Lifts

Been working on this one for a while. They still aren't 100% using them when they should but are a lot of the times. Still going to be tweaking this one.

New Fire System

Yes another new fire system... This time you shouldn't really notice a huge difference but under the hood there's a lot that's been changed. This will make changing firing stats much easier on my end. On the user side you'll notice a more consistent speed to charge correlation.

New Knife Detection System

Again on the user side it won't be greatly noticeable. The new system does use less network data so lag should be reduced.

Engine Update!

Balloon Blast is now running on Unreal 4.26! Maybe one day I'll get it up to 5...

Bunny Hops

A new jump system is in place allowing players to perform a sort of bunny hop out of speed boosts or acceleration cannons. By consistently jumping a certain amount of momentum is preserved.

Debris Icon Animations

The debris UI icon will now animate while changing states.

Actual Loading Screens!

WOW

Thank you everyone for your support! I know updates are few and far between these days, I'm becoming more and more limited on my free time. But I will keep addressing bugs and feature requests as much as I can. I do have more features in the backlog that'll really spice things up!

See you out there!

-Leland <3

Hi everyone!

We've been teasing some big news for a while and, this is it! We would like to announce that on the 26th of August we are removing the demo from Steam, and starting the Prologue! Before anything else, you should head over to the Prologue Steam page and wishlist so you will know as soon as it's available!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2113430/Soulstone_Survivors_Prologue/

Now, why is this big news? Because the Prologue is coming with a TON of new content available for free before the release of the game! Let me show you some of the new stuff you can expect to try in the Prologue:









May not be as flashy as the above but the Prologue will come with a bunch of overall improvements, fixes and optimisations currently not available in the demo!

No, my friend, not even close! We have SO much more in store for the full version (which is coming hopefully by November!), so many new characters, weapons, the fabled Rune system which will shape the way you play the game, the feared Affixes system to make your runs extremely challenging and offer unique rewards, a LOT of new Lords of the Void and challenges to face, unlocks, achievements, endless mode... and the list goes on!

Not quite. We will be temporarily saying farewell to the Spellbreaker, the Sentinel and to the Arcane Weaver. If you played the Demo and unlocked those characters and their weapons, don't worry, your progress is safe! But, they will be taking some time off after killing Alexi so many times! We will also be removing some active skills from circulation for now. They are all coming back in the full release of the game, so if you haven't yet, give the Demo a go, tell your friends, and have some fun with the current content which will be available for only 1 week more!

Yes! When you download the Prologue, while you will have lost access to the 3 characters mentioned above, you will retain your Skill Tree, materials and Soulstones. You will have to unlock the new characters and weapons, and when you do, those will carry over to the full version of the game as well!

No. The Prologue is just a free version of the game where you can enjoy some new content and keep up with the game development, but, if you just want to wait for the full release and play it once it's ready, this is where it will be. We recommend you Wishlist the full game below to make sure you are notified once the full game is available!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/

We hope you are as excited to try the new content as we are for sharing it with you! We will keep updating the Prologue with fixes, and improvements, and will continuously share more and more details about the plans for the full game as time goes by!

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out here, in the Steam forums, in Discord, or anywhere you might like, we are here for you =)

Thank you very much for your attention,
Best wishes,
- The Dev Team

Last week, we talked about our latest RoboEngineer Spotlight honoree, Bufflehead! This week, we’re showcasing our new camera selector plus some more vacuum updates!


Currently, there are three camera options in RoboCo: tethered follow, follow, and free look. Speaking of the free look camera, we had a couple of players during the demo ask if there was a way to move it around, and there is! To move the free look camera around the environment, hold the right mouse button and use WASD to place it somewhere new. Once you’ve positioned it correctly, let go of the right mouse button so you can drive your robot again. We've updated the hover tooltip to be clearer about this.



But enough about the free look camera, let’s talk about the new camera selector. To use it, first make sure your camera is in either tethered follow or follow mode. Once that’s done, a new camera focus selector UI will appear in the upper-right corner of the HUD.



You can then choose which robot you would like the camera to follow. Currently, the selector defaults to the largest robot, but you can select a different robot to follow via the HUD. You can also cycle through different robots by hitting Tab on your keyboard (or a remapped key of your choice).



The reasoning behind this addition was simple. Unlike Besiege and other similar games, RoboCo doesn’t have a starting block that limits players to building one mechanism at a time. As a result, we’ve seen players add unattached blocks or constructs to a build zone, which our game would then read as a separate robot. This meant that when the player entered Live mode, the camera would try to find a balance between the two parts, leading to confusing camera behavior like the one showcased below.



This is why the new camera selector defaults to the largest robot. You can also cycle to a different camera to track down the unattached parts. It also allows for a new scenario in which a player can easily have more than one robot on the screen, leading to more ambitious builds and designs!


In addition to the new camera selector, our team has also been finalizing some updates to our vacuum part. First, our WIP vacuum up until now just drew objects closer to it, but now it actually vacuums up small objects into a receptacle. We wanted to make sure that you wouldn't lose important objects, so we also added the ability to reverse the air flow direction so that the vacuum will expel or blow away objects.



It is worth noting that you can only vacuum up and spit back out small “mesh objects” like socks. Bigger objects will just be sucked forward or blown backward while “particle objects” like smashed food mush will just be sucked up and never spit back out.



To switch between the different airflows, you can either flip the airflow direction in the vacuum's Properties Menu or map the action to a key in the Controls Menu. We've also added the action to our custom API so you can use it for programming!



To visually tell the difference between the modes, we added new particle effects. When the vacuum is in normal mode, the airflow will look like little cyclones. When it’s in reverse mode (a.k.a leaf blower mode), the airflow will look like jets.




As we approach Q4 2022, our team wanted to make a habit of including a list of ongoing development projects that may interest players! Some of the things we’re working on include:

Cleaning up defects and usability issues in challenges
Troubleshooting a tricky physics bug
Hooking up sound effects and a little bit more music
Reviewing and editing English text to make everything as clear as possible
Porting the game to work with the file system on the Quest 2
A new robot building feature that will be revealed in a future blog!

And that’s it for this week’s devblog! Are you excited about the new camera and vacuum updates? Let us know in the Official RoboCo Discord or on social media! Next week, we’re unveiling some new RoboRepair Tutorials we’ve been working on that didn’t make it into the Steam Next Demo!

For the latest news on RoboCo, follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok! You can also connect with other community members and us by joining our official Discord and Reddit!

Don't forget to add RoboCo to your Steam Wishlist!