It's been a whole year already since Teacup was released... time flies!
Teacup was our first project as a team, and while it's a simple and short game, we're so happy to see that it has brought joy and calmness to so many players. We're grateful to everyone one of you who has played the game and shared your experience with us, and hope to continue working as a team to develop friendly and relaxing experiences.
Haven't tried the game yet? You can pick it up this weekend for 35% off! If you already have, why not gift it to someone you think might enjoy it?
This week we also held a community-led text adventure about Teacup's adventure to the big city over at our Discord. You can read the path the community chose over at the #teacup-anniversary channel, but if you want to choose your own path, you can now also play Teacup's Adventure In Girasole City online!
Two updates in one week! Last time out we presented some quick notes on future content updates as we head into the fall. This time we’re asking you to take a {LINK REMOVED}short survey that’ll provide us insights to help inform the future of Prominence Poker.
As thanks for your time, you’ll receive 10,000 in-game chips upon completion of the survey. The survey will close Sunday, Oct. 23. Fill out the survey {LINK REMOVED}here.
To remind those not in the know, Season 2 (of timed unlocks) started on June 1st when Plus left Steam's Early Access with update 3.25, in which we announced the unlocks for Season 2, showed them in-app, added some changes, yet no unlocks were available when the new Season started.
Free and plus users
All quests on Gold: Cool story bro alternative AI flow
All quests on Diamond: new UI mode
Plus users
All quests on Gold: The skeptic alternative AI flow
All quests on Diamond: 4 new UI skins
4.2 added the unlockable UI mode and 4 skins, and now with 4.4 we get the remaining features, the alternative AI flows for Deconstruct and I Am.
Season 2 sale
To celebrate all 7 Season 2 timed unlocks being now available, we're having a sale for the whole week starting on the 26th at 10 AM EEST, where Plus is for the first time ever 50% off. This kind of discount won't be coming anytime soon, this is a very special occasion for us, and we want to celebrate it with you!
Fixed a hole exit not re-enabling top camera correctly on ‘You Feeling Lucky”.
Fixed system that detects bouncing out of a hole you’ve just entered not clearing a state on the hole leading to incorrect camera being played on re-entry.
Fixed an issue with handling of permissions for sessions as there was a state where private sessions were partially indicated as visible for a time when they haven’t entered a playing state.
Our main focus with the Combat Arena this sprint has been fixing bugs instead of adding new features. This way, we’ll be able to get this next patch out to you sooner. This includes making more improvements to P2P.
We’ve added an option in the settings menu that makes sprinting toggleable if selected. If this setting is turned on, you can tap the sprint button to begin sprinting, and tap it again to stop (as opposed to holding the button down the whole time).
We’re investigating some possible avenues for optimization gains and multi-threading our code, which should lead to some impressive performance improvements.
Single Player
The quick-use favorites menu is fully implemented. You've always been able to favorite items to show up first in your inventory page, but now those favorited items will also show up in the bottom left of the UI while playing as your human character for easy fast usage without having to open your inventory. This makes using healing items or bells during combat much more streamlined.
You can cycle left and right through the list with the Q and R keys, and use an item with Right Click. Some items, like health tonics, let you choose who to use them on. You can scroll through your list of party members with the scroll wheel.
Cycling through items and selecting who to use it on can be done while moving. Using the item causes the player to play a “use item” animation, so you’ll need to consider if stopping for a moment will put you in danger.
On the character creation side of things, we just wrapped up work on the makeup and skin details. Aside from a few touch ups and the remaining hair models, we now have all of the customizable options for character creation complete! From here we plan to make those touch ups to the new models and textures, make the final improvements to the human rig, and then finalize it all before moving on to new clothing and hairstyles.
We’ve completed the system framework for battling with NPC summoners. While the AI part is still WIP, enemy NPCs can now summon their own Lumala or Kodoki or whatever Kinfolk they have to fight you. They’ll also smoothly switch to the next Kinfolk in their party when the current one is defeated.
We implemented the flow that will be used for challenging Guild members/leaders in the single player via a test NPC called "Tough Guy Bruno".
Now NPCs can start as passive or neutral to you, then in dialogue can become hostile. They can also stop just short of defeating you and start a dialogue (tell you better luck next time), or can start a dialogue with you just as they are about to be defeated (congratulate you on your win).
Development is complete for the new system that humans use when following their Kinfolk, and we spruced it up with some new VFX. If you start to get really far away from your human character while playing as a Kinfolk you’ll see a line begin to fade in, indicating the max range that you are able to maintain a mental link with each other. When you cross the max range, the link "breaks" to show that you're about to be recalled.
We made several improvements to our weather systems, weather visuals, and added 6 new types of weather. Several weather types will also have an impact on combat now. For example: during Heavy Rain, Water type attacks will deal a bit more damage than usual, and Fire type attacks will deal a bit less damage than usual. We have also begun development on a number of passive and active abilities that will influence and be influenced by the current weather.
At the moment, we’re working on concept art on 8 new hairstyles, 1 new Water type Kinfolk, and have nearly finished modeling another new Water type Kinfolk.
We now have the functionality for items that can automatically combine in your inventory. This code is currently being used for some Guild-related functions and will probably also be useful for cooking in the future.
We’ve modified camp objects to cut holes in the navmesh so NPCs can path around them. Nothing like having a heart-to-heart with a team member when a random Lumala comes barreling through your tent!
Development has started on several tools and utility xnodes that are necessary for the game’s story. These are mostly related to triggering specific events or sequences during missions or conversations.
We’ve started planning the process for collecting Scribe and Artificer pledge tier rewards. Backers of these tiers should start keeping an eye out! We’ll give more information on this soon.
Community
The “Art Art Contest” is finished, and our winners have been announced! Thank you again to everyone who submitted an entry. You can look forward to seeing these pictures in-game (presented in no particular order):
Mesmerizing Playfulness by Kiwi
Kindred Kings by Art_Squid
Untitled by CursedEye
Congratulations to our contest winners!
Voting for the community favorite is currently ongoing in our Discord. There are tons of excellent pieces that we weren’t able to select as winners, so be sure to give them some love! Community voting will close tomorrow, September 24 at 12pm EST.
Our Discord community has started a collection of fan art wallpapers! You can find all the submissions from the Art Art contest, plus some other fan art, available to download here. Everything in the album has been added with artist permission, and more pieces will be added over time!
Thanks for stopping by! We’ll catch you next time, on October 7.
Our main focus with the Combat Arena this sprint has been fixing bugs instead of adding new features. This way, we’ll be able to get this next patch out to you sooner. This includes making more improvements to P2P.
We’ve added an option in the settings menu that makes sprinting toggleable if selected. If this setting is turned on, you can tap the sprint button to begin sprinting, and tap it again to stop (as opposed to holding the button down the whole time).
We’re investigating some possible avenues for optimization gains and multi-threading our code, which should lead to some impressive performance improvements.
Single Player
The quick-use favorites menu is fully implemented. You've always been able to favorite items to show up first in your inventory page, but now those favorited items will also show up in the bottom left of the UI while playing as your human character for easy fast usage without having to open your inventory. This makes using healing items or bells during combat much more streamlined.
You can cycle left and right through the list with the Q and R keys, and use an item with Right Click. Some items, like health tonics, let you choose who to use them on. You can scroll through your list of party members with the scroll wheel.
Cycling through items and selecting who to use it on can be done while moving. Using the item causes the player to play a “use item” animation, so you’ll need to consider if stopping for a moment will put you in danger.
On the character creation side of things, we just wrapped up work on the makeup and skin details. Aside from a few touch ups and the remaining hair models, we now have all of the customizable options for character creation complete! From here we plan to make those touch ups to the new models and textures, make the final improvements to the human rig, and then finalize it all before moving on to new clothing and hairstyles.
We’ve completed the system framework for battling with NPC summoners. While the AI part is still WIP, enemy NPCs can now summon their own Lumala or Kodoki or whatever Kinfolk they have to fight you. They’ll also smoothly switch to the next Kinfolk in their party when the current one is defeated.
We implemented the flow that will be used for challenging Guild members/leaders in the single player via a test NPC called "Tough Guy Bruno".
Now NPCs can start as passive or neutral to you, then in dialogue can become hostile. They can also stop just short of defeating you and start a dialogue (tell you better luck next time), or can start a dialogue with you just as they are about to be defeated (congratulate you on your win).
Development is complete for the new system that humans use when following their Kinfolk, and we spruced it up with some new VFX. If you start to get really far away from your human character while playing as a Kinfolk you’ll see a line begin to fade in, indicating the max range that you are able to maintain a mental link with each other. When you cross the max range, the link "breaks" to show that you're about to be recalled.
We made several improvements to our weather systems, weather visuals, and added 6 new types of weather. Several weather types will also have an impact on combat now. For example: during Heavy Rain, Water type attacks will deal a bit more damage than usual, and Fire type attacks will deal a bit less damage than usual. We have also begun development on a number of passive and active abilities that will influence and be influenced by the current weather.
At the moment, we’re working on concept art on 8 new hairstyles, 1 new Water type Kinfolk, and have nearly finished modeling another new Water type Kinfolk.
We now have the functionality for items that can automatically combine in your inventory. This code is currently being used for some Guild-related functions and will probably also be useful for cooking in the future.
We’ve modified camp objects to cut holes in the navmesh so NPCs can path around them. Nothing like having a heart-to-heart with a team member when a random Lumala comes barreling through your tent!
Development has started on several tools and utility xnodes that are necessary for the game’s story. These are mostly related to triggering specific events or sequences during missions or conversations.
We’ve started planning the process for collecting Scribe and Artificer pledge tier rewards. Backers of these tiers should start keeping an eye out! We’ll give more information on this soon.
Community
The “Art Art Contest” is finished, and our winners have been announced! Thank you again to everyone who submitted an entry. You can look forward to seeing these pictures in-game (presented in no particular order):
Mesmerizing Playfulness by Kiwi
Kindred Kings by Art_Squid
Untitled by CursedEye
Congratulations to our contest winners!
Voting for the community favorite is currently ongoing in our Discord. There are tons of excellent pieces that we weren’t able to select as winners, so be sure to give them some love! Community voting will close tomorrow, September 24 at 12pm EST.
Our Discord community has started a collection of fan art wallpapers! You can find all the submissions from the Art Art contest, plus some other fan art, available to download here. Everything in the album has been added with artist permission, and more pieces will be added over time!
Thanks for stopping by! We’ll catch you next time, on October 7.