Zero Chill is back and colder than ever! Log in to get Snowball Captains, which can be upgraded with tokens earned by placing Snowball items in Sets to vote for your favorite. The Captain with the most votes will get another OVR upgrade later in the event. Thaw out some big surprises when you open Presents from packs, complete Daily Objectives to finish your MUTmas Calendar, and look for epic drops like Frozen Legends and Ghosts of MUT throughout the event. Boost your roster and be ready to ice out opponents all season long.
This week at Bungie, we have save the dates, Game2Give updates, oh ya, and a new dungeon tomorrow.
Happy TWABsday, Guardians! This week we have quite a bit to get into, but first, HAPPY SEASON OF THE SERAPH LAUNCH WEEK! OK, no more yelling. On deck (I promise, my last pirate-themed pun) for this week's TWAB, we’ve got a little bit of a TL;DR from last Season, some save-the-dates for this Season, and some “oh by the way’s” just to toss in for good measure. We also have a few rad announcements, and honestly, I'll stop rambling now. Here we go! Read more here.
Greetings Commanders, Turn Based Fest is upon us, and I'm thrilled to announce that today it will feature Zodiac Legion. The game will be showcased by Bumpy McSquigums on his channel and here on the game's Steam page - on Thursday evening / Friday night depending on your timezone, at 6 PM EST / 3 AM CET.
A new build of the game is live for the event. It doesn’t add any new content, as the randomized maps we're working on are still being tweaked, but it should be better optimized than the previous build, and the display issues some of you might have encountered on the Steam Deck or Proton should be sorted out.
Thank you for your support and may the stars shine upon you.
Hello everyone and welcome to the 10th development update.
Multiplayer
It's confirmed! Ancient Dungeon will get multiplayer next year. We do not have a release date yet because we still have a lot of work to do in the coming months to ensure that everything will run smoothly. We also still have a lot to plan out and test to make it work reliably. You can expect more detailed information on multiplayer in the next devlogs, but here are a few questions and answers for multiplayer:
Release date? Not confirmed yet, hopefully sometime in Spring 2023, but this will most likely change!
How many players can play together? The default mode will be 2 player coop but we also plan on supporting up to 4 players if we don't run into any issues with networking/data usage or performance requirements
How do people connect to each outher? People can connect to each other in the homebase via a room code.
How are relics/coins/keys handled? Our goal is to offer toggleable settings for a lot of things to enable players to play how they want with each other. For example, people can enable coin share (cash is shared between all players) or disable it (every player has the cash they collect). When a player picks up a relic, only that player will get the effect, but we will probably also offer settings to make it apply to all players. We are still in the planning stage for all of these settings so expect some more information on that soon.
What about dungeon difficulty? We plan on adding difficulty scaling to the game in order to accomondate multiple players. This means increasing enemy HP, spawning more enemies, and making the dungeons bigger.
Friendly fire? Currently not planned, but we might look into it if demand is there.
PVP? Not planned
Will Multiplayer be crossplay? Yes, crossplay is supported.
Do milestones/etc work in multiplayer? Yes
Will mods work with multiplayer? We can't guarantee that mods will work out of the box with multiplayer, but simple mods (for example adding new items) will most likely work without issues.
How will player deaths be handled? We are still looking into it. We will most likely offer multiple options, such as reviving players with food, or losing the run when one player dies, etc.
Release on other platforms
We are currently also working on releasing the game on other platforms. In a few days, Ancient Dungeon should be available on Pico 4 and Pico Neo 3. We are also working on releasing the game on another platform early next year (if everything goes according to plan).
Other Content
Work has already started on the points of interest system. Since multiplayer has been in development simultaneously to the points of interest system, it remains to be seen which will be finished first. Our goal is to get multiplayer done as quickly as possible in order to have a reworked code base which we can then use to add new content. So expect points of interest to release after (or alongside) multiplayer.
We are also almost finished with an improved modding workflow, by releasing a language server for Visual Studio Code, which makes it possible for modders to get autocomplete information (with hints, documentation and more) for their items, achievements, etc. See the gif below:
Once that is release, we will also start producing some modding tutorial videos so everyone can get into modding a lot more easily than before.
Thank you everyone for all the support! I know the wait between updates takes a long time, but I assure you we are working as fast as possible to get all of this content out to you soon! The wait will be worth it.
TurnBasedFest has just got going and we’re honoured that Relic Space is being featured among the fantastic selection of other tactical gems!
As our contribution to this celebration of turn-based goodness, we're releasing another major Demo update. This update reflects the hard work that has gone towards adding polish to the game in recent months, as we gear up for a Q1 2023 launch into Early Access.
Here are some of the key new features in the update:
New challenging game modes
This update gives a first taste of the new game modes that will be important to generating replayability in the Early Access release. A new difficulty level, called 'Extinction', will provide an extra level of challenge for veteran players who are finding 'Tactical' difficulty too straighforward.
And there's now a full-on 'Ironman' mode where, as usual, you are limited to only one save slot, which is automatically updated as you progress and is deleted if you die. Death is permanent.
Improvements to manual mode
A lot of streamers have been picking up Relic Space over the last few months, and watching those streams has made clear that a number of people are attracted to playing the game using the 'manual' as opposed to 'automatic' weapons mode. That's completely understandable, as tactical players often love to drill down into the details of game mechanics by making every small choice themselves. But before this update, the user interface had been a lot more geared towards automatic mode.
No more! This update brings a big overhaul to manual mode, making it fully playable for the first time by removing some unnecessary delays and required keypresses, as well as by introducing a new weapon-range indicator (see the red hexes in the gif below) that simultaneously serves to make clear when your weapons have yet to be fired in manual mode.
Lore
The lore for Relic Space has been planned out in some detail, though to date has been mostly limited to some dialogs in the scripted tutorial missions. This update for the first time brings lore dialogs to random NPCs. Although these are still quite small in number and limited in scope, they offer a taste of the rich and suprising sci-fi narrative still to come.
Change log
Full details of the changes can be viewed on the (see Demo 211) website.
Join the community
To discuss the game with fellow fans - and the developer - and get free early access to bleeding-edge builds, join the Discord. Alternatively sign-up to the low-volume newsletter to be notified of key updates and new releases.
Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game - [CAMSO] MrChips
The winner of the Face of the Update Challenge, courtesy of Xepy. After nearly 18 months in development, we are thrilled to share the LCV4.2 Update for Automation! It's been a challenging development process for this new milestone version, but the result is pretty special!
What's changed? A more accurate question would be, "what hasn't changed?", because this is the most comprehensive update we've ever made to Automation; nothing went untouched! Let's start at the top, shall we?
Complete Engine Designer rework, including new turbocharger options
Many turbochargers gives many horsepowers.
The entire Engine Designer has been redesigned, and a lot of the stuff going on under the hood is completely new. A totally new engine simulation model, that accurately models temperatures and airflows within the engine has been constructed, allowing for dramatically improved simulation accuracy, and a much broader window of performance for your engines. This is especially true for turbocharged engines, as we have completely re-worked how the turbos themselves work, making them much more accurate in all aspects, but low-end performance especially. For the first time, we now do a full simulation of the engine at all throttle settings; this is all made possible by moving most of the calculations to C++ from LUA, which has had a dramatic performance improvement.
Naturally-aspirated engine quad-view graphs.
Turbocharged tri-view graphs.
New graphs greatly aid in engine tuning, which is far more important now that you have control over the size of your fuel system (for carbureted engines), intake manifolds and exhaust headers. This permits an unprecedented level of tuning to engine outputs, and allows players to target the application of their engines much more easily and accurately. Using the fuel and ignition timing maps can help you tune for the best possible power for high-performance builds, or getting the engine's efficiency exactly right with your gearing for optimal efficiency. More information on how to tune your engines can be found in these two tutorial videos:
As you saw above, we've added a bunch of new turbocharger configurations in LCV4.2, including single and twin-turbos for nearly all engine configurations, as well as quad turbos for V12 and V16 engines. Many new fuel types have been added and accurately modelled as well, including ethanol blends, methanol, compressed gas fuels and nitromethane, among others.
Light Campaign Version 4.2
The bold new world map for Campaign mode, new in LCV4.2.
The big new feature in this update is Version 4.2 of the Campaign Mode. In prior iterations of Campaign Mode, players would be "flying blind" when they were building their entries into various markets; there was no easy way to predict how successful your new car is going to be. With LCV4.2, that changes, as we have added extensive forecasting tools now, to help players make informed decisions about markets and pricing, and have taken a lot of the guesswork out of the process.
Factory staffing page.
We've also had a complete re-think of how factories work in Campaign Mode; each country has a finite pool of workers available at a given wage, so don't build a huge factory in Dalluha in 1946 with the expectation of running three fully-staffed shifts immediately! Careful planning will be needed to make sure you have the right number of employees in your factories at the right time.
New features in the Car Designer - Advanced Trim Settings and more
A fun example of what's now possible with the Advanced Trim Settings tool in LCV4.2 - these also export to BeamNG.drive!
Take your Automation designs to the next level with the Advanced Trim Settings tool in the Car Designer. Alter engine sounds to your liking, and the visual appearance of your designs by changing tire sizes and appearance, ride height, wheel parameters and many more. These changes also export to BeamNG.drive as well!
Note: These changes are visual only and will not have any effect on the performance of your Automation car, or on your exported car in BeamNG.drive.
Show off your creations in our new HDRi photospheres.
Shinyodd's Super Silhouette build, looking fine in one of the new HDRi photospheres.
We've added a cool new tool in the Photo Mode; the ability to use HDRi photospheres to place your car into an entirely new world of photo locations. What's more, the new photospheres have a pretty major performance increase over the conventional photoscenes, so those with less powerful computers will be able to produce some fantastic results regardless!
Massive performance increases - no more launcher!
As fun as the 80s Engine Test Room was to have in the main menu background, it really slowed things down... As mentioned earlier, we've taken much of the old LUA game code and translated it into C++, which has granted a huge performance increase in the speed of calculations, both in the Engine Designer and especially in Campaign Mode. In many cases, we've seen an improvement of a factor of a hundred or more, which will be welcome for those very complex, late-game Campaign Mode playthroughs!
A lot of attention has been paid to loading times as well in LCV4.2; we've completely changed how Workshop mods are loaded into Automation, so we have now done away with the game launcher as the default option when starting the game.
Version compatibility and branches
Because LCV4.2 is basically all-new under the hood, all of your cars and campaign saves from 4.1 and earlier will not be accessible. The file structure has completely changed, and we've moved the save directories to %localappdata%\AutomationGame\Saved - this was done to eliminate the issues we've had with antivirus programs and protected folders affecting Automation.
When you upgrade to 4.2, your 4.1 saves are still all there, but they won't show up in latest version. There is a way you can bring your 4.1 cars into the 4.2 version of Automation, but you need to be on 4.1 and export your cars to make that happen.
Start Automation and go into the Car Designer, then export all of the cars you wish to keep as .car files. These will be found in Documents\My Games\Automation\CarSaveExport. You will need to do this for each trim you want to carry over.
Update Automation to the new version, and subscribe to any mods you want that are compatible with the new version. To find compatible mods for the new version of Automation, go to the Steam Workshop page, and in the bottom right corner, select "UE4_27" from the dropdown menu labelled "Game Engine".
Once Automation has completed updating, copy the .car files you created in Step 1, and paste them to %localappdata%\AutomationGame\Saved, then run the game.
Do note that none of the engineering (engines and drivetrain) will import, and any bodies and fixtures that have not been updated with the new version will also not import either.
What are branches? Branches of the game allow you to access different game versions through your Steam Library. You can pick which branch to run on by right-clicking Automation in your Steam Library, selecting Properties, then going to the Betas tab, and selecting a branch. Once that is done you need to let Steam update the game.
We will be keeping the existing LCV4.1 version available as a rollback. Additionally, we have opened up a branch of an older LCV4.2 with only the updated turbochargers but not the rest of engine designer revamp, listed as 42_pre_ed_revamp. There are also other legacy versions of the game available to you.
That's about it - we hope you all have fun with the new version! We'd love to hear from you too; get in touch here or on our official Discord server, on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, or on Reddit or the official forums. Have fun and enjoy, all!
