The team has been hard at work to bring you quality content as part of a new and improved gameplay experience.
Here's an overview of what's included.
Village Aspirations
A fundamental aspect of Foundation is the customisation of your experience, which is reflected in the game by the organic growth that makes each village unique. With 1.9, we wanted to go one step further and give you the ability to achieve Village Aspirations: optional objectives that offer different ways to play in order to nab sweet GOG or Steam achievements. Examples include building an Abbatial Church or having 100 citizens in your village
Village Aspirations are another way for us to not only increase the replayability of Foundation, but also to make it a somewhat more challenging experience.
Progression revised from the ground up
Update 1.9 changes several elements of Foundation, including the way you progress into the game. Now, each Estate—whether it be Labour, Clergy or Kingdom—has several unlockables of its own. Investing influence in and thus favouring one Estate makes it more difficult to progress with the others. This dynamic requires more planning on your part and adds weight to your decisions without restricting your ambitions.
In addition to Estate-specific progression paths, there is also a common progression path, which includes quite a few essential production buildings in Foundation, such as the Warehouse, the Stonecutter Camp and the Fishing Hut. In either case, you will need to reach different tiers of Prosperity before being able to unlock some of the most desirable options. This new measure of your success takes into account six factors: wealth, territory size, trade, population, splendor and beautification.
Our next updates will focus on upgrading both the Kingdom and Labor progression paths.
Edicts and privileges
You may have noticed that the progression page has a tab dedicated to edicts and privileges. This is another new feature introduced with Update 1.9. The first case represents what may be described as laws that you enact in your village. The second case represents rewards given by the different Estates to their most loyal Lords or Ladies.
Edicts and privileges grant important boons such as reducing a Splendor penalty between two Estates, increasing the market value of certain resources or reducing the maintenance cost of production buildings by half. They are unlocked with coins or influence points. Afterwards, you just have to choose the edicts or privileges you want to activate.
Buildings and sub-buildings
The city-building aspect is at the heart of the Foundation experience, so we wanted to let you expand the capabilities of your buildings. You can now assign functions to a group of building parts (what we call sub-buildings) instead of individual parts. Each sub-building will therefore be linked to a single function (e.g. Treasury) which you can change should you desire so.
In a few words, this means that a Monastery can now be home to a Chapel, a Scriptorium, a Hospitium, a Monastic Garden and so on. The same goes for a Market, which you can expand by adding a sub-building associated with a separate function from the parent building if you wish, such as a Luxury Goods Stall. At any time, it is possible to browse each of the functions of a parent building thanks to the "Parts List" tab.
A glorious Monastery
Progressing on the Clergy path, you’ll soon notice important changes. For starters, there are several new functions available, including a Hospitium that will host visitors, a Scriptorium that will help you produce Manuscripts used to promote your faithfuls or a Cloister where they can meditate while fulfilling a new need. Moreover, you will have the pleasure of building a prettified Abbatial Church: our artists have done a great job upgrading its visuals for your enjoyment!
Taxes for all
Previously, Foundation's economy was largely tied to market stalls. With Update 1.9, taxation replaces the main way to fill your coffers. The Manor House now has a Tax Office function, which is combined with the Tax Collector job. Each house accumulates coins over time, and it's up to you to decide how heavily your village will be taxed. But beware: people are not too keen on having to pay much, so there is a balance to be struck so as not to collapse your global Happiness factor!
Even more modding possibilities
In keeping with our commitment to the modding community, we've outlined several new features that are sure to snowball in the coming weeks. Without getting too technical, the major changes to unlockables, the progression system and narrative choices will certainly result in the creation of mods that we'll be happy to share with you!
Looking forward to a bright future
Foundation’s 1.9 update is multi-faceted and marks an important milestone in our Early Access (EA) journey. We hope you will enjoy how we reimagined some of the existing systems while adding more depth to the core medieval city-building experience.
As for what the future holds, in the short term work has already started on a first patch to fix newly discovered bugs. At a later date, and after focusing a lot on the Clergy progression path—particularly the Monastery—we want to give the other two Estates the attention they deserve. We plan to overhaul the Kingdom and Labor progression paths, in that order.. We will let you fill in the gaps as to what that might entail.
The Winter Update for Halo Infinite is just a few short weeks away, bringing with it a plethora of new content.
Campaign Network Co-Op will allow you and up to three of your friends to experience the Master Chief’s journey in Halo Infinite’s Campaign together—from the Warship Gbraakon to the Silent Auditorium, and the vast shattered landscapes of Zeta Halo itself. This will further be supported with the addition of Mission Replay, allowing you to hop between completed missions as you wish, and gives you a further 24 Achievements to unlock.
The Forge Beta will also arrive in the Winter Update. With thousands of new objects and countless new additions and improvements, many of which we explored in our Forge Fundamentals (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4) video series, the time has come for you to unleash your creativity as we put the most powerful tools of Halo’s map and mode creation in your hands at last.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. With a new 30-tier Battle Pass, new events, new modes, new maps, and more, our latest Overview showcases all the exciting new additions coming your way when the Winter Update launches on November 8.
Giddyup explorers! Another issue of our developer diary series is ready for ya butts.
Humies and their humie ways.
So we have done the possible, we have built, textured, and rigged the first batch of human characters for Sapphire Safari.
From left to right…
Professor Frida: Main quest giver and photo judge. Voiced by the lovely KumBomb.
Jamie: The female playable protag.
Oscar: The male playable protag.
Bunny: For scale.
Oscar is playable in-game right now with our internal builds, with Jamie coming soon. In terms of clothing, we are doing it as layers so during the intimacy scenes the player can choose what to remove and the system can remove items that get in the way. It is not likely for v008 that we will get the torn clothing options in, but expect that each character will have a “post-ravaging” look as well with the default appearance soon.
Animal bonding fitting just right!
The internal build is progressing really smoothly, with the focus mostly on making penetration partners working with the IK Doll system. It looks great right now, the next steps include making animations work with the bodies and then face shapes.
Lot’s more to build on from this point but getting everything lined up and working out of the box is the first step!
Expedition retirement screen
An extremely important UX issue we have for Sapphire Safari is what happens when the player finishes exploring whatever island they are currently on. How all the systems need to come together to both reinforce game mechanics and respect the player’s time and independence. No one likes extreme hand-holding, that's for damn sure. So here is our first proposed user flow for that experience. Likely to change, or not, who knows.
player clicks retire in the menu, with a confirmation prompt
screen fades, and opens up on Professor Frida, Frida displays run statistics (expedition length [game time], number of photos taken, numbers of interactions, distance traveled, number of species identified)
monpedia/quest submission page, highlights entries that can be submitted, if an entry exists already, compare the new photo and the old
after approving everything, the player is shown the familiarity bars for affected species growing and any unlocks for that growth
Frida judges the 10 highest-scored photos and displays them in a gallery, players can favorite and shares photos on steam API or social media, following this another screen similar to page 2 shows the PP being added to the research level, leveling up unlocks new island locations
As I mentioned earlier, we will likely change the layout and maybe even the flow depending on feedback and game feel. Not sure when this will be ready for public consumption but the work on the flow has already started.
Another staff member added!
The last point I want to bring up is the addition of a third programmer to the development staff of Sapphire Safari. His role is mostly as a supporter to the main staff since it is a part-time position, his first task is coming up with a scoring system for the photographs that do not reward players who take dog-shit photos. We all know what I mean by that, the absolute minimum quality. We want to reward good composition and artistic focus. This work will span over a couple of builds most likely.
Changes for the first full release "1.0.45 2022-10-19 777" include: - fixed game crashing with AMD cards - updated lighting library - update game engine to 1.11.0 - energy chargers and printers spawned only in industrial sectors - fixed resource access warning - more complex dialogs for house owners - fixed tile color - added keys for AI hints - fixed sleeping tutorial - added 10 battle tracks - bug fixed that could lead to unresponsive UI - fixed setting "lightrays" game option - spawning less rats - more interaction dialogs - removed broken "restart with training"-option - save point infos in lobby - talk rewards only for completed dialogs - less subsystems in hacking panel - less laser energy consumption - it takes longer for lamps to break - bigger hunter info window - deactivating armor mods when armor hub is out of energy - tweaked loot spawning - locking only one room per sector - slower battle moving for hunters
- Fixed a bug that allowed ambient sounds to play inside buildings. - Fixed a bug that allowed weather effects to trigger inside buildings. - Fixed a bug that spawned an encounter every step. - The chamber door inside the Mages' Charter to the teleporters now functions. - Prince Vendric doesn't disappear upon conversation. - Added a new village; Weyen's Gate. - Gondoliers (Aava of Blackmark and Aryn Bereth) are bugged since the recent map change. DO NOT USE.
The “Reaper’s Game” lasts for one week. If you can earn enough points by completing missions and become the top ranked team, then you will be granted whatever you desire! However, the lowest ranking team will be “erased” from existence.
NEO: The World Ends with You, an action RPG where Rindo Kanade gambles for his life in the dreaded “Reaper’s Game” is now available on Steam!
Enjoy comic-book style events featuring dynamic, vividly drawn characters, solve mysteries using a huge variety of psychic powers and engage in thrilling battles where you use instinctive controls to lead a team of up to six characters. NEO: The World Ends with You tells a dramatic story set in modern-day Shibuya in Tokyo, keeping the of the unique aesthetics of the original The World Ends with You released in 2007, but providing an all-new gameplay experience.
-A new permanent bonus level is available for Halloween -1 environment, 3 enemies and a boss have been added -An interface bug related to the damage received has been fixed -A crash related to the final boss has been fixed -Humanoid replicators inflict more damage and attack more often -Minor bug fix
Albion’s next major content update is just around the corner, and we can announce it will be called Beyond the Veil. Today, in the first of several in-depth looks at some of the new features and changes coming with this update, Game Director Robin Henkys introduces some significant improvements to the Roads of Avalon.
Changes to Hideouts in the Roads
A number of new features will help players to make their homes in the Roads:
Hideouts in the Roads will be able to be declared Headquarters
Hideouts will require power to be maintained
There will be an initial three-day grace period before this applies
Power Cores can be found in the Roads, but cannot be carried to or from the open world
Guilds seeking to control entire Hideout regions within the Roads will have to be considerably more active to do so
Hideout construction can be accelerated
Logout Changes
Logging out in the Roads will return you to the place you first entered the Roads
This causes durability damage to equipment, and the loss of some stacked items
Players who are disconnected will have an extended window to reconnect before being removed from the Roads
This will prevent players staying in high-value locations to scout them constantly, making the Roads more competitive and rewarding exploration
New Objectives
The types of objectives found in the Roads have been expanded:
Open-world treasures will randomly appear
Mobs will upgrade over time if untouched, as they do in the open world
Crystal Spiders will also be found
Large Group Content
The reworked Roads will provide challenging and rewarding content for groups:
Mobs have been strengthened overall
The areas between Hideout regions will contain high-value content for large groups
Large portals are now exclusive to these ‘raid regions’, while small portals have been removed entirely
These changes should reinvigorate the Roads of Avalon as an area for small group play and independent guilds, providing a variety of PvE and PvP options and rewarding exploration. We hope to encourage new guilds to enjoy this content, and can’t wait to see who makes their home in the Roads.
Stay tuned for our next Dev Talk, where we’ll delve into some more mysterious content coming with Beyond the Veil.
Meet the main aircraft prize in the upcoming new Battle Pass season! A really huge payload and a very special piece of munitions onboard!
A-1H Skyraider, attack aircraft, USA, rank IV. Premium.
Features:
Huge and varied payload
Flares
Quick energy loss in maneuvers
Vulnerable to fighters and SPAAG
‘Toilet’ bomb
In the new season of the War Thunder Battle Pass, the “Smell of Victory”, which we dedicate to flamethrowers and napalm, it was impossible to skip the A-1H Skyraider, one of the most famous napalm aircraft ever. Skyraiders enjoy well-deserved respect from US pilots and tankers. These are classic piston-engined attack aircraft of the American school, real workhorses of rank IV. Their worn old wings are capable of carrying an impressive payload, and four 20-mm cannons are able to rescue other pilots from enemy fighters or light anti-aircraft guns on the ground.
The A-1H Skyraider will be the new member of the attacker family, and the most advanced one. The main difference from the AD-2 and AD-4 is the significantly greater weight of the suspended weapons. Among the most interesting options are 30x250lb bombs, up to three 2,000lb bombs, and a much larger number of FFAR unguided rockets. In addition to the greatly increased payload, this attack aircraft carries new types of weapons for the series - incendiary bombs and 7.62mm minigun pods, as well as flares to protect against guided missiles.
Fans of aviation know well the remarkable photo of the A-1H Skyraider aboard the USS Midway aircraft carrier, on which, among the usual range of weapons, a porcelain toilet is mounted on the wing pylon - a mark of 6 million pounds of bombs dropped in Vietnam. War Thunder pilots who will take part in the new season of the Battle Pass will have the opportunity to send a porcelain round to ground targets. Yes, you can take one toilet bomb into battle! With a direct hit, the lavatory equipment can knock out a misfortuned crew member in an open compartment of an enemy vehicle. Although the toilet can’t hurt the material of an armored vehicle, it will definitely hurt the feelings of self-assured tank commander!
The new A-1H Skyraider and dozens of other prizes are waiting for you in the new season of War Thunder Battle Pass! The Devblog about the third prize and the full list of terms for the new season come very soon! Stay tuned!
another month, another update! I am still very busy with beta update 2, which I hope to finish and release very soon. So let's quickly take a look at what has happened over the last couple of weeks!
Current Progress
The area in which most of update 2 takes place is far below the Lysandrian Heartlands. I originally had a different level layout in mind but I decided to rework it into something more manageable (and also more interesting). Now, after about two months of work, the level is about 90% there. It still misses some details and narrative assets, but the lion's share of the work is done.
Update 2 will feature one of the biggest areas in the game. I believe this is a good opportunity to introduce you to Monomyth's fast travel system. Of course, this system can't just be activated through a map menu. Instead, it is a part of the world itself. Players will have to figure out the mechanics of ancient teleporter rooms that can be found all over Lysandria.
Talking of mechanics, update 2 will also introduce a few quest-specific mechanics that are related to the new area. There will be some mining and smelting, and while there is no real crafting system in the game, players will be able to toy with some of the interactive machines that can be found in the area.
I also took a little break from level design and worked on the game's inventory. Not only does Monomyth now feature visually more appealing menus, but the menu interactions have been streamlined to a point where most player/environment interactions can be done from the inventory. Players can now pick up, throw and combine items directly from within the inventory screen. I also integrated the object placement system that I implemented a few weeks ago. This way players will have a much easier time placing fish or pie next to a cooking spot (a recurring problem in the demo).
As a result, the inventory interactions are now a lot more intuitive (and coincidentally, also a lot closer to what Arx Fatalis did).
Gamespot Article
As you probably all know, Monomyth was partly inspired by the King's Field series. Because of that, the project was featured in a Gamespot article on upcoming King's Field-like RPGs. So if you haven't checked that out yet, you can find the article here:
And now it's time for me to go back to the mines and finish that beta update 2! Then it's on to updates 3 and 4, which I hope will be finished much faster since most of their level design is already done. Update 4 will also be the last content update before I start polishing everything for the open backer beta. As you can probably already guess, this also means that the release will slip slightly into 2023. Lots of progress has been made but there is still quite a bit of work left to do. I will give you a more detailed overview of the road to release in one of the next updates. Until then!