Well, here we are at the end of 2022! It's hard to believe I've been working on MonCon on and off for close to five years now. This past year has definitely seen the most amount of steady progress on the game.
I have some cool new content to share, but before we get too far down into the weeds, I'll let you guys in on this newsletter's big announcement:
MonCon will be coming out by the end of 2023!
I've finished enough this year that I feel safe drawing this line in the sand. 2023 will still be a tight race to the finish line, but I think that this deadline strikes a good balance between getting the game out in a reasonable amount of time so that I can move on to other projects, and not compromising on the game's overall quality.
So by hook or by crook, come hell or high water, the full version of MonCon will be in your hands by this time next year.
Now, let's consult the progress chart and see where things are at:
As you can see, the game's side-quests are mostly done! Right now, I'm working with a secondary writer for the rest of the side-quest content. My goal in doing this is to really cement that eclectic "melting pot" vibe that you get when attending a convention, and bringing in a second writing voice should really help with that. But working with outside help means that a fraction of the game's cutscenes and quests are still cooking in the pipeline.
Meanwhile, MonCon's arcade minigames are also coming along nicely. I've settled on a grand total of eleven minigames for the final game. Seven of those are complete, but the remaining four should have a fairly short development cycle, as they'll mostly be reskins / tweaks / advanced versions of the existing minigames.
Here's a peek at one of the brand-new minigames I just put the finishing touches on:
I've also begun working on brand new monsters you'll have to conversation-battle in the later chapters of the game. There are a lot of new monster designs that I can't wait for you all to see! Here's a few that you'll have to converse with in Chapter 3...
Last but not least, I wanted to give everyone a convention-related update. As per our usual tradition, we will be attending CSGC in Tulsa, Oklahoma in April. This time around, we will have a brand-new build of MonCon that will be feature-complete up to the end of Chapter 3, AKA the first 40% or so of the game. This goes far beyond any public demo of MonCon I've ever shown at previous conventions. If you're in the area, you'll definitely want to drop by to check out all the new game content.
And that's it for now! Wishing everyone safe winter travels, and we'll talk again in the new year!
Testing, bug fixing, optimization ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱ 99% ▻ Fixed AI ignoring walls when shooting at higher ground ▻ Fixed AI moving against wall when close to target ▻ Fixed that enemies don't always show up ▻ Fixed that the teammate does not always run towards the enemy when he is not nearby ▻ Fixed character creator not working ▻ Fixed cloak and hair clipping with shield, 2h and bow ▻ Fixed cinematic sprites flickering ▻ Fixed bug when opening options that the selection jumps ▻ Fixed missing weapon colliders ▻ Fixed character floating bug ▻ Fixed enemies missing standing targets with attacks ▻ Fixed character clipping with floor during attacks ▻ Fixed VFX bug of 1h axes ▻ Fixed wrong naming of NPCs
Clean up project, prepare game for Steam ▰▰▰▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ 30% ▻ Added Steam stat variables
Polish / Optimize animations, vfx, sfx and textures ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱ 99.9% ▻ Changed timed parry doing dmg to energy and staggering only if enemy has no energy left ▻ Increased attack push of enemies ▻ Increased spike trap duration ▻ Reduced collider radius of 2nd boss attacks ▻ Reduced HP of 1st boss and 1st elite ▻ Added new UI for codex ▻ Added speech bubbles ▻ Added speech bubbles for elites ▻ Added AI modes for aggressive, defensive and support behavior ▻ Added dialog options for NPCs
Feeling a little lethargic after one too many holiday indulgences? Don't worry, SYNCED has just what you need to get back on track...
Week-long "Chip-Spree" Event (Dec 29 - Jan 6)
The New Year is almost upon us, so start as you mean to go on with a little help from your friends at SYNCED. For one week only, all mods will be subject to a double drop rate. This means more rewards for less effort, giving you the perfect way to experiment with exciting new builds. As the SYNCED Open Beta passes the half-way mark, we want to give our players the opportunity to mix and match their favorite mods, and to uncover fresh new playing styles never previously considered. Have fun!
Grab Permanent "Holidays in Haven" Rewards (ends Jan 6)
Our seasonal event is still live until Jan 6, and there are a range of weird and wonderful rewards to scoop up before it finishes. Remember, Holiday rewards are permanent (meaning they will be valid in the full release of SYNCED too) so this is an opportunity you don't want to miss!
Join the Community on Discord
The SYNCED Discord community is the perfect place to discuss strategies or to recruit a mod-hunting squad for your next drop into the Meridian. Our devs are also active within the community, and always eager to lend a helping hand. Feel free to leave feedback and suggestions too, as we're always seeking ways to improve the SYNCED experience.
Due to issues with the savefile getting corrupted and players losing their progress, I have removed autosaving from the game.
Now, if you experience a pc or game crash, then you should lose only some progress, not all of it or the entire save game. The game does continue to save, of course, when it closes.
A pc or game crash (or other reason) should not affect the game anymore, hopefully.
This dev diary was originally posted exclusively to patreon subscribers on 22nd December 2022.
Welcome back! Sorry that I didn't get chance to post a dev diary last week, we made plenty of progress, but it was all boring stuff.
You'll be pleased to hear that the main rendering for Chapter 2 is ALMOST complete. Hopefully within the next 24 hours or so I should have all of the required renders for the chapter 2 beta launch.
Don't get too excited just yet however, there's still some stuff to do. We still need to actually play through the entire chapter and make sure it all works and make tweaks to image transitions etc. There's also some cosmetic work still to be done on the freeroam section to accommodate the coding changes.
Lastly, we need to implement the new points system. We have spent countless hours bouncing ideas back and forth with some working and some not so much. We need to finalise what the new points system is going to comprise of, how we will use it to calculate the content available. We are currently implementing a system that we can test and once we are happy it works we will spill the beans. If your interested in why we are rejigging the points system it's to allow the tracking to be much easier during the later stages of the game. With the old system it's really hard to say things like "the player needs 248 points to access this content" whilst bearing in mind the various branching paths the player may have passed to get where they are. That's easy early game but gets very complicated very fast.
We have set an internal target for a release candidate of the Chapter 2 beta for 9th January. This WONT be the day the game launches, but is the day we plan on having the game compiled and running ready for bugtesting. Bugtesting may take a week or so to complete. Please note that these dates are VERY ROUGH. We will confirm when everything is ready to go.
That's about all for now but check back soon for more info!
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Patch to fix the Italian translations! Please note, Chapters 1 through 5 are still machine translation. Chapter 6 is native. The previous chapters are being translated properly right now, and I hope to get them into the game within a few weeks!
Hi guys! We're back from xmass with a patch ready for application! Enjoy!
changelog: - steam achievement fixes - fonts rescale in all translations (they should fit the windows now) - fix bug with flowers on onsen map. You can get 100% nature now - music tweaks, added sound effects - Improved Scanner targeting - added “Play again” button on the world map to underline if chosen map was already played - you should be able to clean Onsen to 100% - fixed robots placing - fixed problems with the world map window - fixed Chinese font problems - minor translation additions - minor terrain fixes