First Content Update

Features:
Humongous Fungus Side Mission
Venture to the deeper parts of the Asteroid Shard Cluster and destroy the fungus plaguing the area

Seeder Ship Dungeon Mission
Take the fight to the robot threat and can save the Bullzorbs if you choose to, either way you get to shoot more stuff!

H.O.R.D.E. Mode
Enter the Heavy. Ordinance. Robot. Development. Emulation. and gain new rewards including all new weapons, crypto and more resources to upgrade your arsenal.

Consumables
The player can now pick up Lettuce and Lettuce Milk and equip them to their consumables slot to heal during gameplay. (Prototype for future inventory expansion)

New UI
Star Map, Main Menu, Loadout and other menus are now improved.

Sluggard Redux
The sluggard character class now has a sleek and slimy new look!

Map Changes
Odious Opus Hubspace has more clutter
Asteroid open world has more fungus growing throughout
Robot Spaceship interiors are now more detailed
T1NY-1 asteroid level to access the Nullverse Void had various improvements

Bug Fixes:
Queen Pathing during escorts improved.
Player now dies when falling out of levels
Star Map UI is more consistent and can access areas as the player unlocks them
Can access all options in the Main Menu
Missions are more consistent when playing in various orders
Physical objects are now more optimised and can be pushed around more easily
Additional sounds added to enhance gameplay
Monster Truck Segway gameplay improvements
Various quality of life changes
Various performance improvements

Hey Slime Girl Trainees! We have made few small bug changes and fixes. Let us know how we are doing and hope these small things give the game the extra polish much like Berry has polish on her....personality...

-Added icon
-Removed "development build flag"
-Optimized "after credits" behaviour of the game

Legendary luxury sports car maker Ferrari has joined the party. As the Ferrari 296 GTB comes racing into the arena, players will also get a chance to score a free Ferrari Player Banner. Do we really need to explain how cool this is? Ferrari is going to be in Rocket League!!!

The Ferrari 296 GTB races into the game on August 31.




It’s impossible not to appreciate a Ferrari's incredible engine noise and innovative styling. For the lucky few who get to drive one, the car’s true glory shines when you hit the road. With everything from its engine to aerodynamics representing the pinnacle of engineering, the Ferrari 296 GTB creates an exquisitely unique driving experience.

While not everyone can get behind the wheel in real life, the in-game version comes with everything you need to bring the power of the Ferrari 296 GTB into the Rocket League Arena.

• Ferrari 296 GTB (Dominus Hitbox)
  
• Ferrari 296 GTB Engine Audio
  
• Ferrari 296 GTB Wheels
  
• Ferrari Antenna
  
• Assetto Fiorano Decal

[/b]
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*Note: Items included in the bundle can only be equipped by the Ferrari 296 GTB. The Ferrari 296 GTB cannot be customized with other branded content.


Ferrari is a global luxury automotive brand that defies all expectations. Fans of Ferrari can show their support with the free Ferrari Player Banner, available to claim in the Item Shop beginning tomorrow!

The Ferrari 296 GTB races into the game August 31 - September 6, beginning at 9:00 a.m. PDT (4 p.m. UTC)

The day has finally arrived — ORX entered Steam Early Access and is available for you to play. The road to this day was an amazing journey filled with countless hours of development, support from the amazing community, participation in various events and orx. Lots of orx.

But enough talking! Check out the Launch Trailer!


So what does Early Access Include?

• Fully playable 4 Act rogue-like campaign
  
• 2 playable Factions with distinct gameplay
  
• 4 biomes with distinct sub-biomes
  
• 7 types of orx and 4 Bosses
  
• Elemental and Sephiroth Systems
  
• Hundreds of cards for your deck
  
• The Encyclopedia where you can check out the cards and learn lore about them
  
• And much more!

And the best part? It's only the beginning! We have so much more planned for ORX, but we'll let the Road Map speak for itself.



No Early Access is perfect, and we're very aware of that. So in case you encounter a nasty bug, here are the ways you can report them to us:
Steam Discussions
Bug report Google Form
The Feedback channel on our Discord

Not sure how to play the game? Fret not! We've prepared a handy guide, which will explain the basics of ORX to you.


And as always, follow us on Social Media and join our lovely Discord Community!

• FPS limit setting in options: It is now possible to determine and / or limit the framerate in the options
  
• Anisotropic filtering has now also been added to the options. Level x2 - x16 selectable
  
• Inventory drag and drop and move: Now fully tested and implemented
  
• Brightness options added: In the options (and also if you start a new game) a brightness settings screen will appear.
  Pretty much the same as in other games.
  You see three images and can adjust the brightness so that a certain image is difficult to see in order to choose the optimal brightness.
  
• Full controller support: From now on it is possible to use a gamepad (Playstation® or Xbox).
  4g3v has adapted everything for this so that there are no longer any problems playing STCB with a gamepad.
  
• AI settings: NPCs can now behave differently.
  These include being friendly, aggressive, I don't care how behaved, neutral and alert.
  In addition, the NPCs have become much smarter and no longer act like Frankenstein or like me 😂
  
• New feature "Syringe" added: Various syringes can now be found in the game.
  They differ in the color of the drug that is injected and thus in the effect. For example, red returns health. We have a little video for you below.
  
• And also, as some of you have requested, there's now an outline on items:
  

You read that correctly, there will be "something" in the game that will teleport you to another "world".
Unfortunately we can't give you any more information about why and how we did it, otherwise we would reveal too much.
But what we can tell you is that it will be AWESOME!

From Furon with Love: Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed is Out Now!

Vienna/Austria, Offenburg/Germany, August 30, 2022: Citizens of planet Earth, experience a completely remade cult classic with an expanded arsenal, an improved saucer, a much more open world and a fully playable story in local co-op. Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed is out today!

Visit locations like Bay City, Albion, Tunguska, Takoshima and Solaris to seek your revenge and give those pesky humans a good demonstration of your broad weapon arsenal. Why wait to probe another day when you can grab your licence to probe right now?

Check out the release trailer on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKY0HCoBFnE

Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed is available for PC, PlayStation®5, and Xbox Series S/X. The SRP for the standard edition is $ 39.99 / € 39.99 / £ 34.99. The Dressed to Skill Edition is available at an SRP of $ 54.99 / € 54.99 / £ 44.99.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1266700/Destroy_All_Humans_2__Reprobed/

Enjoy & stay tuned!

From Furon with Love: Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed is Out Now!

Vienna/Austria, Offenburg/Germany, August 30, 2022: Citizens of planet Earth, experience a completely remade cult classic with an expanded arsenal, an improved saucer, a much more open world and a fully playable story in local co-op. Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed is out today!

Visit locations like Bay City, Albion, Tunguska, Takoshima and Solaris to seek your revenge and give those pesky humans a good demonstration of your broad weapon arsenal. Why wait to probe another day when you can grab your licence to probe right now?

Check out the release trailer on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKY0HCoBFnE

Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed is available for PC, PlayStation®5, and Xbox Series S/X. The SRP for the standard edition is $ 39.99 / € 39.99 / £ 34.99. The Dressed to Skill Edition is available at an SRP of $ 54.99 / € 54.99 / £ 44.99.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1266700/Destroy_All_Humans_2__Reprobed/

Enjoy & stay tuned!

Greetings adventurer,

You might have discovered Crownd and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit of the Steam front page, right? Correct peeps, we are running a Daily Deal at the moment! Woohoo! This is really a great thing and an even bigger honor for us as a small indie studio. We are really happy about every extra pair of eyes that sees our beloved classical point'n'click adventure. ːsteamhappyː

With the Daily Deal, Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit is 25% off till September 1st 7pm CEST / 10am PST.

You get in the adventurer boots of Milda, a girl from Chicago. She unexpectedly receives an inheritance from her grandfather – a house in Lithuania. She sets off to Europe and with this to a trip through the modern day Europe to uncover the secrets of the king who was never crowned.



We also released the new update 1.0.2 today, which implements some changes and improvements to Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit that were brought to us by you, our awesome community! And we are not done yet - if you have some feedback to share, please do. It's really valuable to us, and we read and analyze everything we get. Promise! ❤️

We hope you enjoy playing the game as much as we did developing it!

Have a great and sunny Tuesday everyone!
Mingailė & The Tag of Joy Team


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1125910/Crowns_and_Pawns_Kingdom_of_Deceit/

At the end of last month’s post, we mentioned that there have been a number of Brigador Killers test builds (or BKTESTs as we call them) put out over the past eight months. In this post we’re going to cover some of what appeared in the first three BKTESTs with a series of clips of each in the video below. Each section is timestamped and a short explainer is provided.

Caveat as before that what you see is not indicative of the final product; this is us lifting the lid up and letting you take a look at the less glamorous side of game development. That means you’ll see jank like clunky animations and weapons not mounted properly, a distinct lack of things like new sound FX, while veterans of Brigador will recognize reused UI elements.

Please also note that some of the things mentioned in the previous news post, such as the in-level item acquisition or threat response escalation systems, are not yet implemented either. However, careful listeners keep an ear out – you might hear something new in the first section…

Lastly, in terms of timeline, BKTEST01 was pushed in December 2021, BKTEST02 was March 2022 and BKTEST03 was June 2022.


Various video games tend to have some form of level like this. In our case we refer to them internally as “zoo” levels (other games may refer to them as dev rooms depending on genre). In our case they are specific maps populated with every single type of a “thing” according to a particular category. This particular zoo map is every single “prop” (environmental assets like buildings or light poles) in every orientation needed, hence “allprops”. Most big props seen here are in four rotations, though smaller ones like signage (that we refer to as “minis”) will get more. The sprites for the props are rendered at a greater level of visual detail compared to the first game, though at this point in development there were no destruction sprites, so the buildings here are invincible despite being shot at occasionally.

As for the on-foot player character, this is Tactical Dennis, who currently serves as our placeholder for a plainclothes Brigador Killer with a temporary gun equipped.

As the name implies, this level is a small loop to drive around in. Visually it’s not very interesting, but this is the first implementation of two major things:

• Vehicle entry/exit
  
• Wheeled vehicle movetype

In BK you will be able to get into and out of vehicles like cars, tanks, mechs and so on. Currently the player character merely “teleports” into a vehicle provided they are close enough, which is indicated by the green debug circle around a vehicle (eagle-eyed viewers will also note the change in camera zoom upon Dennis entering a vehicle – a hint of things to come later).

Concerning the implementation of wheeled vehicles in this game’s engine, note that previous vehicle types were either tanks, stompy mechs, or floating agravs. Those of you who might be typing “But what about the treadbikes?” – sorry but those were technically just very narrow tanks. This is not the case for the muscle car in the footage.

With the new wheeled vehicle movetype we can do things like configure its mass, speed and acceleration as well as set the friction coefficient, the offset of the vehicle’s center of gravity and the stiffness at which it takes corners. In other words, we can recreate vehicles to handle as if they have front wheel drive or rear wheel drive. However, in this footage such specifics were not yet dialed in, so the cars appear very floaty and frictionless and can even be pushed around by the player character as if they’re on ice. It does not help that there are no engine sounds or visual effects like tread marks either. That said, because of this movetype we can do things like make the muscle car pull a somewhat convincing J-turn, which was not possible in the first game.

This cityscape is a number of props placed down on top of new ground tiles such as the pavement and cracked tarmac, road markings, as well as grass tiles. The player character knocks over a few lamp posts, shoots a muscle car to destroy it and leave what’s called a “hulk”. They also get into an odd-looking vehicle that we use for testing purposes. Despite shooting at various things and crashing into objects, outside of the “mini” lampposts, the player can’t currently destroy anything because at this point neither trample damage nor destruction sprites are in the game.

This build introduced a few things that may not be immediately apparent, chiefly:

• Player suit choice (which later affects incognito status)
  
• Infantry scale weaponry
  
• Running and crouching animations for on foot characters
  
• New road vehicles
  
• Morale system

We’re still reusing the old UI as a means to load our level. We have a new pilot portrait (whose face you’ll see on the video’s thumbnail) of “Kermit Carthew” which currently has no effect. The “vehicle” choice in the Freelance menu allows the player to choose what sort of suit they want to roll out in (plainclothes, police tactical rig, or Carmine Suit), which will affect what’s called their Incognito status upon loading into a level, although only the next build will show off non-hostile NPCs. Primary and Secondary are now weapon slots the player can switch between, and this BKTEST contains a selection of infantry-scale weapons to choose from (yes, even the Mãe Dois).

Initially the player picks out an RPG and an SMG, enters the level and we immediately see that we have actual night-time lighting compared to the previous build. The player blows up some new destructible props to drive a van through (because trample damage is still not in, so we can’t drive through), then comes across an NPC driving a muscle car. The player gets out, shoots at the vehicle and the NPC driving it bails from the vehicle, giving the first glimpse of the effects of the morale system.

WHAT IS THE MORALE SYSTEM?

In BK, NPCs and vehicles will have a morale threshold. A simple way to think of this system is as a separate invisible health bar that, when reduced by “morale damage”, will set off certain behaviors like escaping from a vehicle or fleeing from an area. Weapons or other effects like explosions can reduce a target's morale "health". In the footage the player damages the vehicle's morale (alongside inflicting regular damage), so the driver immediately bails, freeing up the muscle car's pilot slot and allows the player to take control of the vehicle.

The plainclothes player then comes up against a small police road block, unable to run them over (because, again, this build does not have trample damage in) and gets into a brief gunfight with pursuing cops.

The player then loads in with a police tactical rig equipped with a rifle and a blooper, and drives back to the same checkpoint to make quick work of it, before driving off to find more cops to deal with, and briefly finds a police motorbike to drive before switching to the Carmine Suit.

The player loads in with the suit, a Mãe Dois and an RPG, and sets about dealing with the level’s garrison of cops using both weapons. At one point in the footage infinite ammo was toggled on in the debug panel which is why the ammo counters go into the negative values towards the end.

This build specifically contained:

• A shooting range and another cityscape nicknamed the “Broken Grid Arena”
  
• Uprezzed playable versions of the Spacer Arlo agrav and Rounder tank, and the Loyalist Betushka
  
• Mousewheel zoom
  
• “Threat” indicators
  
• “Flinch/flee” behavior
  
• Trample damage
  
• “Incognito” mode and non-hostile NPC behavior
  
• Destruction sprites for props

Much like the race track and allprops from BKTEST01, the shooting range is a test level that deliberately has a bunch of NPCs and props lined up so that we can test various things like weapons. We also see the new Arlo, Rounder and Betka lined up.

Most of the NPCs in this test level will not attack the player because of how we have their AI configured, save for the three boxed-in Rounder tanks that do a pretty good job of killing the player very quickly on sight, which signposts another major divergence BK is taking from the previous game. Those of you used to the higher difficulties of the first Brigador will be accustomed to being fired on immediately – and how we made that “fair” was to give enemies with high lethality weapons like the Zeus a very broad aim cone – but reproducing this same behavior in BK has turned out to be extremely unforgiving. So, at the edge of the screen in BKTEST03 we’ve provided threat indicators in the form of yellow “Caution” icons to telegraph danger to the player. Other things, like firing delays and weapon spin-up/spool up for guns to simulate more “human” reactions are being worked on in order to dial back the lethality of engagements.

Lastly, in a separate pen we have a number of Dennises and Nospol cops standing around. Although they are passive, when the Betushka opens fire you will see the Dennises scatter and Nospol crouching down - this is an instance of the flinch/flee behavior, which is tied to the morale system mentioned earlier. In short, depending on what sort of combat is going on, the crowd and cops may either attempt to run away or crouch down to lower their profile.

The theme of Broken Grid Arena is a first attempt at making a level suitable for vehicular combat. Our objective is simple - take out a number of enemy Rounder tanks. The level's layout simultaneously allows for long sightlines as well as several chances at irregular intervals to break line of sight and flank.

For this final clip the player initially starts in plain clothes to demonstrate non-hostile NPC behavior. One thing we intend to do in BK is to allow the player the ability to scout out a level’s layout without entering combat. So, the player hops on a nearby motorbike, comes across an enemy Rounder tank that doesn’t fire on us… but does run them over (because trample damage is now in the game). Oops.

Restarting, the player jumps in the Betushka provided at the spawn, demonstrates the new mousewheel zoom function, does some prop destruction and takes another route through the level. Another Rounder ambushes the player off screen so the player deploys smoke, strafes around and gets some rear hits in. The encounter is brief but just one main cannon round from the Rounder was enough to take off all the player’s shields and deplete a chunk of the Betushka’s armor, so they go hunting for another vehicle.

The player finds an Arlo agrav beside a building, so they dismount from their Betushka and hop in to encounter a second Rounder and attempts to ambush it from the rear using its superior speed.

Restarting the level, the player finds an empty Rounder hidden inside some bamboo scaffolding. With this, the player immediately ambushes an idling enemy Rounder, taking it out with one well placed shot to the rear (for those not familiar, in the previous game, enemy vehicles will take additional damage on side and rear hits – though so will the player). The Rounder is bulky, can roll through props without too much trouble, and the player proceeds to ambush a second enemy Rounder from the rear. The player then gets into a straight one-on-one with a third Rounder and restocks some lost shields.

Elsewhere in the level are a number of other vehicles, such as the Tuk Tuk, which the player briefly takes a spin in. Around the 20:10 mark, the player drives the Rounder from side-to-side in front of some props to deliberately demonstrate the lighting system the game engine has. We won’t dwell on this point, but if you’d like a little more insight, feel free to check out this brief twitter thread on the topic.

Lastly, the player takes out a police checkpoint and two more Rounders, making use of the staggered layout of the props to juke the AI. In one instance you can see that an enemy Rounder “drops” two policemen fleeing from a destroyed Rounder that the player mops up with some MG fire. With the garrison of this level eliminated, the player ditches the Rounder, finds another Tuk Tuk, and races to the exit.

As said in the introduction, the first three BKTESTs have not yet covered the intended loop we want prospective players to engage in. However, that does not mean we didn’t learn anything from the BKTESTs. What is not mentioned in all of the above are the various hurdles that were involved just to ultimately produce such footage.

In terms of the art pipeline, several changes to the previous Brigador workflow had to be made in order for the assets to look “good” at the increased output resolution – but this doesn’t just apply to the static props. Coupled with the different zoom, the initial attempts at processing the new vehicles (“vehicles” here also includes the playable on-foot units) at 64 sprite rotations would often give the vehicles a sort of “jerkiness” as you drove them round corners. So, in order to produce “smoother” turns, vehicles like the muscle car are actually outputted at 128 rotations. It’s for this reason that no mechs are present in these builds yet because the animations for their lower halves are going to take time to get right. On the upshot, as a result of all this new work, the speed at which outputted sprites can be added to the game is significantly faster than what it was like for Brigador.

In terms of scope, we didn’t demonstrate it in these builds but the introduction of the pierce/penetration system for weapons that was briefly mentioned in last month’s post (but is explained in more detail in this dev stream archive) has added significant breadth to the amount of data work required. We knew this was going to happen and it’s important to do the due diligence because we’re establishing a foundation for a lot of other aspects of gameplay. If we did not, it would be much harder to alter such things further down the line.

BKTEST04 was recently pushed in August 2022, and it includes what we hope is a robust implementation of the pierce and penetration system for both various weapon and unit types. To give you an idea of what was involved, look at this abridged table by our designer that reflects the current implementation of eight tiers of damage against respective armor types.

The first BK alpha is our next milestone, which we’re currently looking to deliver around Halloween this year.

Finally, you may have missed it but we’re running another community survey among our player base. It’s seven short questions that’ll help us get to know you better, with an optional form at the end to leave your email address if you’d like to be entered into a raffle to win something from our merchandise store. You will only be emailed if you win. Be quick, you only have until Thursday, September 1, 2022 to leave your response.

Take Survey