The following is the (probably incomplete) changelog for Update 1 which will be releasing on October 4.




Other changes

• Around 100 new regions added to the map outside of the Domain
  
• 4 New levels of technology
  
• End date moved from 1400 -> 1600
  
• Cohesion now drifts upward at a static rate of ~.25/year
  
• Energy production increased doubly by development
  
• Updated tutorial tooltips
  
• Load custom flags for the scenario editor!
  
• Rebalanced naval professionalism reform
  
• New Resource: Hypermatter
  
• New Upgrade: Covalence Infrastructure (+20% resource base production)
  
• Various new modifiers
  
• Reforms now affected by legislature support
  
• Republics can no longer pass reforms without faction support

Bugfixes

• Fixed diplomacy bug when loading saves (opinions would change drastically when loading the game)
  
• Fixed occasional cosmetic bugs over loaded savegames

Preface: I’ve been crunching for too long and I’m very ready to take a day off. Forgive the typos! XOXO

---

Hang on to your helmets! This one’s going to be big!

Holy crap these are exciting times. First of all, I finally get to reveal the new key art for the game:



It just blows my mind how awesome this looks! Here’s the original:



Original is done by Tuandat Phan and pixel conversion is done by MementoMoree.

Hats off for the stunning work!

Skald is participating in the Steam Nextfest starting Monday October 2nd! This means you get to play the brand new demo of the game! I can’t wait! You will be able to find the demo on the game’s Steam page come Monday!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1069160

Please note this is NOT the prologue page. In fact, as of next week, the prologue will be unavailable going forwards as we phase it out for the new and updated demo.



As for scope, the build you’ll play on Monday, is much shorter than the current prologue. It should take you about 20 minutes to finish and it recycles quite a bit of dialogue content.

However, as Nextfest progresses, we will be adding content to it so be sure to stay posted and follow our development as the demo grows.

I just thought I’d give a short update on this as well! We’ve invited a small subset of the community to start testing builds and I fully intend to get keys distributed to all the other testers in the coming weeks. I’ve just been so swamped with demo development that it has had to wait.

However, if you backed the game at the Freeman level or up, your key IS coming!

All the following updates are featured in the new demo.

Inventory system has gotten a huge update where I converted it to the new UI system. It’s far from done but it’s still a huge update! It looks a bit noisy, but I promise it plays well and feels snappy and responsive.



I’m also going to do more tooltip stuff where you can hover over stats on the different character sheets for explanations etc but didn’t have time to do that as fully as I wanted for the demo so you’ll have to wait a bit to see that feature in action.

Yup! I put crafting in the game! For now you can cook stuff and there are just four recipes. The system of course still needs polish as well but it’s technically sound and I love it.



I’m going to delve deeper into crafting and consumables in an upcoming devlog when I’m less sleep deprived. Stay posted!

Stealth was very wonky in the prologue. Who knows how it even worked! I’ve updated it now to a more active system, where you can choose to enter “Stealth Mode” Your model then goes transparent and your see a stealth meter. As you move around the meter drains. Having a high stealth skill, wearing light armor, sticking to shadows etc, all influences how fast your stealth meter drains.



All in all it works really well for all it’s simplicity and I’m pumped to see the hijinx it will lead to in the final game!

In short: Play the demo on Monday! Keep checking in as we add more content!



I’m exhausted now – this is me looking for a bottle of wine to knock me out!

---

To stay posted, be sure to follow the Skald Twitter and Discord and wishlist on Steam if you haven’t already!

Cheers,

AL

Hello everyone!

We are quite excited to tell you that our latest game, "Escape Memoirs: Mini Stories", has been released. It is a smaller free co-operative escape-room game that we decided to make as a thank you to our players for their continued support, which has allowed us to get this far. We sincerely hope you enjoy it!

0 Deer Soft

It’s time to plunge yourselves into the stars one last time before release! Do what you have to in order to survive.




Three days of streaming, tech-testing, and space piracy kicked off at 16:30BST today and ends October 3 at 16:00

We'll be interacting with players all weekend, so be sure to be active in Discord and share your streams, clips, and feedback.

❗ There will be a data wipe on Monday, your Tech Test progression will not carry over to Early Access.



When the Marauders Tech Test closes on Monday, the Early Access version of the game will subsequently push live to coincide with this.

Tell your friends, watch some streams, participate in the final tech tests this weekend, and get hyped!



https://store.steampowered.com/app/1789480/Marauders/

Couldn’t catch the Legacy of the Bretons Autumn Event? Here’s all the big news and excitement you missed—including how to get the Firesong DLC for free!


We were thrilled to share more about ESO’s 2022 adventures during the Legacy of the Bretons Autumn Event livestream on https://www.twitch.tv/bethesda yesterday, but if you couldn’t watch the show, don’t worry. Here’s everything you might have missed!

Senior Community Manager Gina Bruno, Forum Manager Kevin Gbolie, and Zone Lead Jason Barnes sat down for a deep dive into the upcoming Firesong story DLC. Together they discussed the new zone, storyline, characters, and how it ties into the larger Legacy of the Bretons adventure.

You can watch the entire discussion (including a short tease of the new DLC’s zone trailer) below!


Don’t forget, Firesong arrives on PC/Mac and Stadia on November 1, and Xbox and PlayStation consoles November 15.
In addition to the DLC, the team also talked about the Firesong Prologue. This free quest that sets up the events of the Firesong DLC is now live on all platforms for anybody who owns the ESO base game—go check it out!


You can learn more about the Firesong Prologue in our announcement blog.
The Heroes of High Isle in-game event also kicked off yesterday, and during the livestream the team revealed a bonus final reward: the Firesong DLC.

That’s right! Should the community reach 100% in the Heroes of High Isle community challenge (reached by earning the High Isle Pathfinder achievement), they’ll unlock the Firesong DLC for FREE for all High Isle owners. If you haven’t already earned your Pathfinder achievement in game, now is the time to do it. Even better, the High Isle Chapter is currently on sale on all platforms—don’t miss out!


Of course, the Heroes of High Isle isn’t the only in-game event left in 2022, and you’ll soon be able to earn special rewards and Event Tickets during the following:
In addition to all the above, the ESO Community Team also has a ton of fun and engaging activities and contests in store for the #ESOFam during these last months of 2022. For starters, #TESOctober, our community art activity, is about to kick off on our official Twitter and Instagram channels. Check out the different art prompts below and be sure to share your creations with us!

But that’s not all! Keep an eye out on social channels and https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/ for a new community art contest AND other weekly activities—we’re going to have a lot of fun in the coming months.

Phew! As you can see, we revealed a LOT during Thursday’s Autumn Event livestream, but we think you’ll agree ESO is going to close out 2022 with a bang, so be sure to join us. What parts of the show did you most enjoy? Let us know via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We’ll see you in Tamriel!

And finally, the base game is complete! Here’s a short summary of the new content added.

Endgame content:

• Act III intro sequence
  
• Final quest for The Coming Storm questline
  
• Final quest for Iron and Velvet questline
  
• Final quest for the Abyss questline
  
• Final quest for the Bloody Hawk questline
  
• Final quest in For the Guild main questline
  
• Endgame sequence

Other content:

• Added new lore intro
  
• Re-added and bug-fixed 3d Free Mode as bonus content
  
• Standardized relationship system (so all companions have the same menu)

Bug fixes

• A lot

Still, I missed a few reported ones and I expect the new content will have some bugs too (specifically, Pursuers may not appear) and there will be a lot of instances where an “in-development message” pops up but isn’t needed. I will be standing by for bug patches.

I also intend on fixing the bug that interferes with the Steam overlay, which will arrive with the additional content updates down the road. While the base game’s complete, there’s still plenty more I want to add. Including:

• Backer-generated content (including new characters and questlines!)
  
• An openworld section for endgame
  
• More sex scenes and time with companions
  
• Content for the battle arena/blood pit
  
• A spa/massage room for the Guild Hall

Look for a roadmap on those too soon.

It’s an exciting day! Thanks again for supporting me. While it hasn’t been the longest Early Access period (roughly a year and a half?), it has been an eventful one!

I will keep you updated on new content coming and the eventual sequel.

ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

In preparation for the steam next fest I added another level and more items to the demo.

Dear Fans,
Dear Followers,
Old & new,

Welcome to this September 2022 dev diary for Task Force Admiral.

Life’s been sweet to us in September, at least by the standards set by 2023. We didn’t have much to complain about, we were among our loved ones, doing our work. That work, unfortunately for most of it wasn’t very graphic, and as such can only be mostly explained through the unabashed use of walls of text and a few diagrams. Yet, it was an important step in the direction of providing Task Force Admiral with a soul beyond its pretty face.

Operation Barebones, the codename we gave to our basic playable slice, is well on its way. This month was all about artificial intelligence & its strategic implications, along with efforts to provide the game with its strategic layer. With each passing week, Task Force Admiral is morphing into an actual game, and like many of you might think - clearly it was about time!



So as to make sure that the enemy and friendly AI in Task Force Admiral behaves in a believable fashion, we need to reconstruct carefully a scheme of thought. The AI will be asked to adhere to this logic, that tries to emulate the process you would expect from a commander faced with dilemmas, over and over again, and reacts dynamically to them – with some sense, but often with some wrong assumptions of his own. It means developing a specific set of tasks which will identify clear goals, whether these are dictated by the original mission objectives or by the ever-evolving combat situation.



Another department where some sweat was expended in no small measure is our interface for the Naval Search missions. Separate from defensive and offensive missions, this tool will ultimately allow you to program your sector searches, the ubiquitous opening move of any proper carrier battle during which both sides send scouts to locate their opponent before launching a strike.



Yet, although it is a common matter treated by all games about the topic, Naval Search ended up being a remake of the irreconcilable "the chicken or the egg" kind of conundrum: setting up a flightplan based on a given sector you wish to investigate (aka populating it with your aircraft) vs. generating a sector from the aircraft you have available. Sounds kinda simple & harmless enough, but it ends up being a rather game design-defining choice, and a tough one at that!

Each system had a few issues of its own when it came to providing us with the tools needed for the job. The latter is actually what people usually have in games like that - say, in Carriers at War, Task Force & Pacific Air War, for instance. You add aircraft from your pool, sub-sectors are created each time and add to each other, and there you go, that's the good old Microprose way many of you have been used to, easy to use. I'd know that, I could use it when I was 9 and set in another language, so it must have been pretty handy after all!



On the other hand, you also have the rarer breed of the sector taking precedence over aircraft themselves, 2by3's War in the Pacific being one example. But even then, a squadron is limited to one sector search at a time, which means that you need two units when you need to cover two sectors. Mostly, each technique encountered can be either put under one or the other doctrine, with their own limitations. These are limitations we attempted to solve in TFA, hopefully with some luck, observing the best practices and learning from our illustrious forebearers. Here's the preliminary result we came up with.



After some experimenting, we ended up convinced that the mission itself (aka the area to search) shall be the defining item, rather than the result of the air assets you have in hand - and if the latter don't work to cover your needs, then you'll have to revise your needs to take your limitations into account. Similarly, using a mission-based system rather than a plane-based system allows you to create as many search plans as you like, including two-phased ones or sector searches going in opposite directions, yet worked on separately by aircraft from the same squadron.

This done, the next stage will now include the vital doctrine-related & behavioral choices we want to inject in the gameplay, so as to allow you to brief your scout pilots - simply, but with some clarity - regarding what you expect from them. We will hopefully cover that in the next update, if all things go well in October, that is!



While Jean Baptiste our coder was busy trying to assemble the brains of our game, one cog at a time, obviously other had his own workload.

Now that most of the fleet is on its way to finalization, our 3D artist had some spare time to dedicate for a smaller task – and by that we don’t mean a matter not less important in the larger scheme of thing, but purely something that doesn’t involve big ships, but little men.



Our local pixeltruppen, that is our digital sailors, officers & other crewmen, are often requested as a feature in the comments left & right in our social media. Do understand that they are a concern for us all the same, but we are looking for the right most satisfying and balanced way of including them to the game without incurring a disproportional workload that would possibly affect our overall timetable and pipeline. For now, we will probably settle for static crewmen which will certainly add some bits of life to the scenes, despite their unequivocal stillness.

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Adding animated models would require the opening of a different can of worms we can ill afford right now, but obviously our wish is to get there at some time down the line, especially if we were to be successful at release. It is, when all things are said and done, in the category of pure eye-candy, but this is the sort of feature that contributes its own valuable little step towards an improved overall immersion.




In the same fashion, don't expect these soldiers above to jump out of their Daihatsu barge and storm a beach. For now, it is all about adding some more immersion to the mix, and we will certainly develop this further as time goes once the game will be seating on solid foundations. But until then, at least we won't be afflicted with that silly "ghost ship syndrome" most of you dislike so much! Better than nothing, like they say.



As for the 2D front, we’ve been painting new ships one after another, while still researching better rendering techniques for our vehicles. As our skins are all layered with different effect, working on a given layer in order to improve a given effect doesn’t impact workflow as much as it used to back in the day when a single overall skin was to include everything you needed to dress up your model. Rivets in particular are a tough customer. Whether they are visible or flushed, they still require an extra bit of attention to render properly while being optimized so as not to slow gameplay to a crawl when a wave of 50 SBD is about to dive on the Kido Butai. The progress is probably more apparent with pics rather than words, so I’ll let the pixels speak!



And that will be all for this update! As a final word, yet again, don't forget that we have a mailing list here specifically made so as to keep you updated of all our Steam updates and other announcements which might be big enough to deserve a special treatment. Click on the pic below to access the form.



Cheers & see you for our next update!

The Task Force Admiral team.

What's this?🧐

Why, it's an invitation to our Early Open Beta - join us this weekend for some suspicious shenanigans!

This Early Open Beta will run from Saturday, October 1st, 8:00AM EST to Monday, October 3rd, 12:00AM EST

Gather your friends for some sus-shroom silliness!
Looking for others to join the fun? Hop on our Discord to find other mushrooms 🍄

We hope to see you there!

Like us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Subscribe to our YouTube

The Haiku Inc. Team is excited to announce our update for the World of Haiku: Down the Rabbit Hole.

We have been listening to your feedback, which we deeply appreciate, as it allows us to improve our products.

This update has new features and exciting content that you’ve been asking for including:

• A new mission including a much-requested Blue Team mission!
  
• New tools Including: netstat, iptables, and ps
  
• Repeatable "Dojos" (aka side mission) to allow unlimited practice time on nmap, hydra, and john the ripper
  
• The ability to connect to a Haiku account and our Haiku Pro product (*this functionality will be active with our Haiku Pro release, access to the free version of Haiku Pro is included, higher level subscriptions require a separate fee)
  
• New characters and the opportunity to play a mission as an Agenda 21 operative
  
• New Map Animations
  
• Patch that helps the game run smoother and requires less processing power.

The World of Haiku is expanding so your skills as an ethical hacker can grow along with it!

A note about this update from our game developers:

“From a technical perspective, our first Grid Augmentation, Down the Rabbit Hole, will come in the form of an extra mission at the end of the storyline. Here, the audience will get to play the role as both an antagonist Agenda21 agent and an ally Ronin agent.

Additional commands and tools will be taught to further the adventure along with fresh unlockable content in the form of new training dojo's guided by the new trainer A.I. character, Inky-Alt.”

_________________

- Haiku Central
- Our centralized hub connecting you to Haiku Pro: Test out your cybersecurity skills on our custom-built cyberranges.
- Badgr
- Share your earned badges earned on World of Haiku and Haiku Pro on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms. Badges will be awarded to your Haiku Central email. To claim badges, create an account on http://badgr.com with the same email as your Haiku Central account.


- [ADD] New missions: 8A and 8B.
- [ADD] nmap, john the ripper, and hydra dojos!
- Progressing through the game unlocks dojos that highlight a particular skill/tool. Each dojo is based on either Agenda21, OGI, or Lendwey networks but with randomized IPs, credentials, users, services, OS, and device info with numerous randomized flags to capture.
- [ADD] Characters: Inky-Alt, Lugh, Saga, and Spyder Bros


- [ADD] New missions: 8A and 8B.
- [ADD] Animations.
- Unlocking a network.
- Network hover.
- Network decals.
- [ADD] Locked mission button plays a sound when it's clicked.
- [UPDATE] Network map animations are faster and more responsive.
- [UPDATE] When a network is selected, press the ‘ESC’ key to zoom out.
- [UPDATE] The lighting and Grid background color are unique to each mission.


- [ADD] netstat
- [ADD] iptables
- [ADD] ps
- [ADD] kill
- “kill [sig] -0" or "kill [sig] -1" kills all processes. This requires specifying a signal, which is -9 or -15.
- [UPDATE] cURL: Added the -o | -O argument to download HTML pages or files.
- [UPDATE] ifconfig response to include en0 and more interfaces if a device has it.
- [FIX] mkdir only returns “`Missing directory name`" when called.
- [FIX] rm -r now works without a trailing slash.
- [FIX] mkdir now fails to create a folder if a file with that path exists.
- [FIX] Error response with -L -p argument combination in Hydra.


- [UPDATE] Settings App
- [ADD] Social & Support button
- [ADD] Integrations button
- Haiku Central
- Badgr
- [FIX] terminal welcome message correctly shown when exploring a completed network.
- [FIX] Map icon notification activated when the player presses the [SPACE] key to continue to the next mission rather than the [ESC] key.