Nov 18, 2022

Astride - Raidho Games

Hi, everyone! It's that time of the month again and we are back with more work in progress to share with you. It's been an interesting couple of weeks, but we are keeping a steady pace of development for Astride.

Fast canter

During these two weeks we started on adding speed variation animations of the different gaits, as we move move more to transferring and fixing the game engine animation system. We started with the one you see here which was the most needed; the fast canter. The fast canter is as you can surmise, is a faster variant to the canter we already have and will be the fastest animation before being forced into gallop if speeding up. All this is to avoid speeding and slowing down animations to the point of looking silly before they transition to another gait.

Long jump update

Continuing from last post the long jump got an update with help from the many suggested references our discord community sent us. We felt that the old animation didn't really sell the jump enough, so the animation got basically redone from scratch since last post.

Striding

Striding is an important core feature we need for the show jumping gamemode and jumping in general. It's difficult to show the sheer amount of code that has been written but we promise it's a really cool looking code. We are still in research and development mode, so everything looks broken at the moment in the editor but a work in progress is still just a work in progress. More is to come!

Horse statue

This is one of the statues you can find in Eldheim. The statue is inspired by a few statues we have here in Norway and this fjord is also inspired by an old story from Norway which is called "Vesleblakken" which means tiny, little or small dun horse (Fjord horse). "Blakk" is the Norwegian term for the coat color "dun". The statue's story will be something to discover in the game.

Riding arena

Last week we had a little stream session where we made an arena. This will most likely not be the only arena we will have in our game, and even though there were a lot of details we loved about the one we made on the stream, there were a lot of challenges to make it look nice from every angle as well as being functional. So we have held that design for a little bit, and made a more functional one for the early access. You can read more about the riding arena in this Patreon post.

Tobiano patterns

The last couple of weeks, we've been putting work into creating the tobiano patterns and polishing them. Tobiano patterns will be able to come both with and without "mapping" (the borders around the patterns). Polishing these patterns means cleaning up the edges, adding fur for a soft transition, and most importantly - making sure that they align in a good way when adding multiple patterns on top of each other. Since the tobiano patterns for Astride are separated into three parts - the front, the back and the legs - it is important that all of these patterns can work together to create natural looking shapes that would occur in real life. In addition to work on the tobiano patterns, there has been a lot of time spent on social media and community work (you may have seen a small comeback on TikTok). We are currently trying to boost our Patreon with adding more content and rewards for our loyal supporters.

Character concept update

For a long time we have used two clothing models for some design ideas for Astride, but these drawings are old and were drawn during the idea phase of the game. And of course as time goes by the art style and art skill has changed a lot for our fantastic artist. We are now aiming towards a semi-realistic look and our artist loved to draw the characters with this art style as well. Stay tuned for some new concepts of clothes that we will show you soon.

Please note that everything shown in these devlogs is mostly just work in progress and is not finished. Changes may happen and the things showcased here will have further work put into them! To see work in progress daily, join our Discord server community here!

Nov 18, 2022

Patch update 0.6.6

Successor - Wartile

Hi everyone

We have another major update to Successor with new heroes, battles with more tactical depth, and a new Dregg lord.

Three new playable heroes

Inquisitor
An Inquisitor from the Owl of Athena, directly by the high priest. Loyal to the religious organization but often set to serve the interest of like-minded houses.

Druid
Child of the forest, devoted to protecting and caring for wildlife and its untainted spirits.

Sorceress
Originating from the houses of the north and practitioner of frost magic.

Improved tactical challenges

We also made quite a large update to all the factions to increase the tactical challenge when facing them. These adjustments will be an ongoing development toward the final release.

Grim Legion
Skeleton warriors were made slightly weaker.
Necromancers can now summon skeletons much faster and can cast life drain.
Enforcers have been made slightly more robust.

Havengore
Introducing the Shield Guard has a trait that significantly increases the armor of adjected friendlies.

Blackrock Bandits
Reworded Assassins who now will shift in and out of combat, always seeking to prey on the weak.

The Dregg
Introducing Blighters are now slightly stronger Dregg with the ability to convert itself into a rot hole from where Bloaters will surface.
Bloaters sometimes enter a tantrum with the chance to blow up in a poisonous cloud.
Lord Goremaw spits poisonous liquids and grabs you with its tentacles.

Calsey
They changed their swordsman out with a spearman able to spawn several spiky roadblocks.

Gameplay initiatives

Enemy positions
We changed how enemies are spawned and positioned on Battle Boards at the start. This is to avoid situations where the players find themself surrounded.

Faction traits
Now you can view unique traits for each faction. However, this is still WIP; not all factions have visible traits.

New abilities
You are now able to upgrade the abilities of your promoted heroes.

Environment enemy
The tentacles of Goremaw now occasionally appear in the swamp, be careful not to be grabbed by it.

fire
Fire now ignites poison clouds and extinguishes if in water.

Community

A huge thanks for all the feedback we get from our community. We are working hard to sort out and prioritize all the points and ideas made and figuring out how to best address them. Our focus for the next few months is to improve the moment-to-moment feel of tactical depth and enjoyment of the battles.

Soon we will begin to run more closed playtesting, so please consider signing up for our newsletter or joining us on Discord, and as always, leave us a steam follow and wishlist ːsteamhappyː

Have an awesome weekend, everyone.

Best
The Playwood Project Dev team.

Nov 18, 2022

11.18-12.2 Scorpio Preview Twitch Drops Event Notice

Conqueror's Blade - xinying.ma

Esteemed Warlord,
We'll be holding a Twitch Drops event for the Scorpio season from November 18, 20:00 through December 2, 20:00 (UTC+8), 2022.
Tune in to any of the streams below to earn rewards while watching:
{LINK REMOVED}
Click the link to join the Steam

Runs from November 18, 20:00 to December 2, 20:00 (UTC+8)

Between November 18, 20:00 and November 23, 20:00 (UTC+8)
Watch the streams to earn the following rewards based on your time watched:
0.5 hours: One-Battle Advanced Hero XP Card x5
1 hour: Powdered Silver x10
1.5 hours: Expansion Permit x1
2 hours: Rare Schematic Chest x1
3 hours: Doctrine Water x2
4 hours: Treatise x1
5 hours: Random Epic Artillery Chest x1

Or from November 18, 8:00 (UTC+8) to November 19, 8:00 (UTC+8) by watching the official stream (only applicable for the official stream):
Watch the streams to earn the following rewards based on your time watched:
0.25 hours: Random Epic Artillery Chest x1
0.75 hours: Golden Treasure Order x1, 7-Day Premium Account x1

Or from November 23, 8:00 (UTC+8) to November 24, 8:00 (UTC+8) by watching the official stream (only applicable for the official stream):
Watch the streams to earn the following rewards based on your time watched:
0.25 hours: Random Epic Artillery Chest x1
0.75 hours: Golden Treasure Order x1, 7-Day Premium Account x1

Between November 24, 20:00 to December 2, 20:00 (UTC+8)
You'll receive the following for every 1 hour you watch:
Basic Supply Crate x2
Simple Honor Medal x2
Or
Poem Collection x1
The rewards as shown on the day of the stream prevail.

Between November 24, 20:00 and November 28, 20:00 (UTC+8)
Watch the streams to earn the following rewards based on your time watched:
1 hour: One-Battle Advanced Unit XP Card x5
2 hours: Secret Training Missive x1
3 hours: Heroic Epic x1
4 hours: Doctrine Water x2
5 hours: Advanced Unit XP Card x5
6 hours: Secret Training Missive x1
8 hours: Rare Doctrine Reagent x1

Between November 28, 20:00 to December 2, 20:00 (UTC+8)
Watch the streams to earn the following rewards based on your time watched:
1 hour: One-Battle Advanced Unit XP Card x5
2 hours: Secret Training Missive x1
3 hours: Heroic Epic x1
4 hours: Doctrine Water x2
5 hours: Advanced Unit XP Card x5
6 hours: Secret Training Missive x1
8 hours: Rare Doctrine Reagent x1

Contact us at cb_support@porosinteractive.com should you have any questions whatsoever.

Nov 18, 2022

Announcing: the Sixth History Community Licence

Cultist Simulator - Arabella Dusk

We love mods and the people who make 'em. There are 136 mods in the Cultist Sim Workshop (!), someone turned CS's tabletop into Super Mario, and a while back we wrote a how-to guide to help modders get started. The more mods in Steam Workshop the merrier! Apart from that weird one which takes Laidlaw's shirt off. I see you, degenerates.

Aaaaanyhoo, all this creativity - not just mods, but all the fanart, writing, tabletop games, tattoos (you would not believe where some people get Moth tattoos) - leads me on to some big news. We're opening up Cultist Simulator's IP to let you use it for creative projects on a much larger scale, and even make money from it. SO READ ON! But in Alexis's voice, 'cause he wrote the next bit.

How It Is

Something about the Secret Histories enthuses people. Fanworks, fiction, commentary, art; I've lost count of the number of TRPG homebrew rules projects I've seen. For a long time, our take on this was sure, it's nice to see this kind of thing, use our stuff... as long as you're not making any money out of it, because our IP is our livelihood, and we need to protect it.

But a few months ago I had a conversation with a smallish YTer who wanted to do actual-play videos with their own Secret Histories-based content. I said, sure, as long as you're not making any money out of it... they said, well, we make a little bit out of ads... but it's literally a couple of dollars a month. Oh lor, said I, that's not a problem, though I guess, like, revisit it if you get rich and famous?

Lottie and I realised two things. Firstly, we get a lot of these sort of borderline requests - can I run a LRP based on your work and charge to cover costs, can I use your tarot deck to do professional readings, can I do DeviantArt commissions - and our answer is nearly always yes, but it's often complicated and we have to think about it. And secondly, we really don't mind if a semi-pro or even pro creator pays the rent using our IP, as long as it doesn't hurt our own ability to pay our own rent. And if someone does really well and helps grow the audience, so much the better.

But what, people always ask, if Hollywood calls and then their lawyers say the IP situation is too complicated? Bugger Hollywood. We got optioned for TV a few years ago, did I ever mention that? Like most options, it never went into production, and I realised afterwards how relieved I was. Even though the people involved (a) were clearly nice and smart and (b) had actually played Cultist. If the upside of community licensing is that people make interesting things, and the downside is that we damage the remote possibility of a someday deal which would make us, eh, about as much money as a really successful piece of DLC in exchange for titrating away a quarter-soul's worth of our distinctiveness over several subjective years of meetings... I lost my thread. You get the gist.

How It's Going To Be

So we started talking about permissive licensing. This is where we ran into a snag. It's the lore - the background, the story, the mysteries - that most attracts people. A lot of you want to write your own answers to the questions posed by Cultist Simulator et al. But we designed a lot of those gaps and mysteries very carefully, and we need to be sure there's a clean distinction between Weather Factory answers, and everyone else's.

Here's what we came up with. There is not only one History, as they say. The known Secret Histories are five in number. So if there were an unsanctioned, unknown, unlawed Sixth History... it would be your playground.

We've talked to our lawyers and we're finalising the licence details. We'll release the licence next week but basically:

You'll be able to use the Secret Histories setting as a basis for your own TRPG, board game, app, fiction, art commission...and earn money from it, up to a limit of 50K GBP p.a... without needing to check with us... as long as you follow the licence, and in particular use the Sixth History logo to make clear it's not an official Weather Factory project.

That's the tl:dr; but for God's sake do read the whole license, don't skip bits, if you're planning a project along these lines. (And of course this is meant for small-scale works. If you're thinking of proposing a serious commercial project that may make more than the revenue limit, or if it needs our direct creative involvement, like The Mysterious Package Company's super-deluxe Lady Afterwards, or the Locksmith's Dream, then you'll still need to talk to us, and we don't usually agree more than one of these a year.)

Where's the licence again?

Read it here.

I have other questions!

Come ask 'em on r/weatherfactory on Thursday 1st December at 6PM GMT. This is mainly an opportunity to talk Sixth History but we will inevitably end up talking about all things Cultist Sim, BOOK OF HOURS, merch, game dev etc. Bring snacks and a post-work drink! Or if you're in America and it's therefore early in the day, I don't know, bring porridge.

Other fun stuff coming up

We're full-time on BOOK OF HOURS right now (launching in June 2023! Go wishlist if you haven't already!) but quality of life Cultist Sim updates will continue (see LONGIFLORUM, our most recent update). We also have a Cultist Sim-specific announcement in the new year that you'll like, though I can only tease you for the moment. So I leave you with...

...and hope to see you at the AMA in December!