It's time for an announcement regarding DeepStates.
tl;dr Development for DeepStates is currently on hold. I'm working on a new app called Realms of Flow, which will be closer to my roots, combining pre-rendered cinematic VR with real-time guide visuals. Users who purchased DeepStates for the full price will be eligible for a free copy of Realms of Flow.
Long story:
After struggling with the continued development of DeepStates as well as some health issues, I thought a lot about what I actually can and want to create going forward, and in the end made the decision to put the development of DeepStates on hold for an indefinite period of time. For one thing, after experimenting quite a bit with new environments, I was not satisfied at all with what I personally can achieve in terms of quality, detail and performance with real-time visuals in VR. A lot of aspects like water, clouds and trees are not possible for me to create in a way that I'd like to do - and I don't want to just create deserts until the end of time. Another thing is the amount of pure bug fixing and taking care of technical aspects that ate most of the time and led to a lot of frustration on my side. Complex programming and creating interactable real-time environments is unfortunately not my strength - I tried hard, but same as with the performance aspect I kept bumping into walls I could not overcome. Going forward I'd like to focus more on the content creation and artistic side of things. Hence I created a concept for an app that I probably wanted to create all along but didn't see it. It will combine pre-rendered cinematic stereoscopic visuals (as in Conscious Existence) and interactive real-time guide mechanics as I was already building for DeepStates and which I will iterate and improve on. It still involves quite a bit of programming but on a somewhat simpler level of logic and math where I know what I'm doing. I did a lot of tests and experiments already and am pretty convinced that this is the thing I'd like to work on long-term. It will be available for PC-VR as well as mobile VR. Expect a free demo by Q2/23 and a release in Q4/23. Some people who liked Conscious Existence more than DeepStates (I know there are some) will be happy with this decision, others who are more into the explorable, interactive environment side of things might probably not dig it so much. It is not sure if DeepStates will be continued at some point, maybe if there is a viable opportunity to work on it with a team in the future - yet I'm mostly a solo dev/artist for a reason, so I'm not sure about that possibility. It is a decision I had to make in order to use my time as effectively as possible, as well as staying motivated and healthy. The time that I can spend in front of my workstation every day is limited and I want to bring as much beauty to the world as possible by utilizing what I can do best. I hope for your understanding and that most of you will find value in what I will create.
---Fixes and changes Crash related to player shields has been fixed Default loadout will no longer give invalid weapons Fixed low life amount on all game modes Fixed bucket head, toaster head and Golden Bucket Heads having custom colors Fixed Bots Having Wrong Loadouts on certain modes Fixed Interaction Prompt while on vehicle to no longer flicker Fixed Strange Behavior where Spawning more players would create more bots Fixed Loadout editor Preview Character not having animations and being frozen Fixed Issue with far away players not loading custom armor once they render Fixes To player ragdolls (They still clip tho) Slide boosting will now give the player speed instead of giving a deceleration (It's not infinite acceleration like before but it's pretty fast) Kill bind will no longer kill the vehicle and will only affect the driver Prone Key-bind removed from options Fixed Issues with weapon pads giving duplicated weapons Fixed Issue with aim offset not playing if characters were unnarmed Fixed Issue With game not giving players weapons when they spawned (This was caused by spawning players loading the weapon class too late causing the game to spawn them before assigning a weapon) Bot Names have been removed and replaced to Arena Bot (Sorry for this one but for the players sake of recognizing actual players on the game, It has been changed to that) Fixed shield sound constantly playing if player died (only triggered by vehicle behavior) Max FOV has been caped to 150 (Higher numbers are unnecessary, If you play by that I respect u ^-^) Walker Cockpit Will show proper color Game mode system will now move bots and players accordingly to specified teams Juggernaut Mode Fully Works Fixed Issues with high ping players not activating their ragdolls Tweaks to camera Tilt Impact Grenade now explodes on impact PreeFreePoor Sniper Scope Was Updated --- Additions Crawler Vehicle Has been added (passenger transport vehicle) WIP It can also run Characters over
Experimental Mod Support for weapons (It seems to be kicking players that have a mod installed, needs to be analyzed further)
The Dragonfall Winter Spectacular has now officially ended, and the Tavern has returned to its normal state.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where Heavy Blizzard’s scaling was higher than intended.
Fixed an issue where Quest progress in the new questline would not properly advance.
Fixed an issue where players with old account data were sometimes unable to progress through the Campaign questline.
Fixed a typo in the Meditation Shard.
Fixed an issue where Weekly Quests wouldn’t properly change on the correct time.
Fixed an issue where Campaign Shard Dust didn’t show up in the Material Vault.
The Drenched Shard should now function properly.
Added a fix for chest loot sometimes being lost if players left a map too quickly. Players will now have to wait for chests to give all of their loot before being able to transition maps.
Fixed description of the Dungeon wins Daily Quest.
What’s Next?
As we have talked about in past posts, we are in the works on the next big update for DD2. This update will have a new hero called the Engineer, who as the name implies is great at building new things. I’d leave this here, but I will say the tower for sure isn’t a wall and it isn’t melee.
Social Defenders
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If you encounter issues with this update, please post in the SteamVR Bug Report forum. If possible, please include a system report to aid in tracking down your issue. Replies to this post are not tracked for bug reporting purposes. Please use the forum linked above to report issues.
SteamVR:
Fixed a bug were hiding the dashboard and then calling IVROverlay::GetPrimaryDashboardDevice would return 0 instead of k_unTrackedDeviceIndexInvalid.
Added a setting to disable gpu bus monitoring. (steamvr.vrsettings section "perfcheck" value "disableGpuBusMonitoring" type bool)
Fixed missing font for many dashboard elements.
OpenXR:
Implemented XR_EXT_active_action_set_priority.
Fixed some issues with automapping Oculus Touch bindings to other controllers when no other bindings were suggested.
Enabled Visibility Mask for Oculus/Meta devices.
Fixed some haptic issues including pre-set minimum duration to resolve issue with Vive Wands not responding to xrStopHapticFeedback.
In the Forbidden Sanctum Expansion, we introduced ten new Divination Cards designed by our Supporters. For today's news post, we asked Suzu520 to share their story with us about their card "The Wedding Gift". Check out their story below!
Hello Exiles, I’m Suzu520.
Before talking about “The Wedding Gift” card design, I want to share my journey in Path of Exile. I started playing Path of Exile from the Sacrifice of the Vaal expansion. I still remember the time when I was in the Garena TW server, and people in Global chat were all asking, “Where do we find the Fetid Pool?” Such fun. There was a time where my friends and I could not beat Merciless Dominus, and a random player joined our party through the Noticeboard and cleared it with us. That was a vivid memory of Path of Exile having a very wholesome community. I have played every single league and have enjoyed the game ever since the Forsaken Masters expansion when I finally moved to the Global server from the Garena TW server.
During the closed beta of the “Fall of Oriath” expansion, the playtest was up to the end of Act 7 and that expansion of the main quest storyline shocked me to my core, especially Act 6 & 7: Nessa and Silk’s death. I love the game even more than before, I knew I wanted to design a card and give back to the community.
I am a big fan of Summoner playstyle, from Undying Evangelist Raise Spectre, 50x Summon Raging Spirits, 50x Animate Weapon, all the way up to Solar Guard Raise Spectre. One day my friend told me about the sword “The Dancing Dervish” and the respective upgrade “The Dancing Duo” back then. I had been curious about Minions that came from items instead of skill gems, so I tried it out and absolutely loved them. That was my initial idea for the card design. I wanted a card that allows SSF players to farm specific bosses for, so my original idea was a 6 White-Socketed Dancing Duo, but due to the item not being able to drop, the idea was scrapped.
During Sentinel league, I successfully reached level 100 for the first time with an Arakaali’s Fang build. The build has such a unique summoning style that I fell in love with it, and it was the first time ever I did not reroll a new character 5 days into league starting. Meanwhile, I discovered KittenCatNoodle’s Lore Series and had been listening to all her videos in the background while I was levelling to 100. That was the moment where my brain goes “Eureka!” What if I designed a card that was lore-accurate and gives my favourite summoner weapon? Coincidentally the weapon came from Arakaali, where the end of Close beta during 3.0 was, and it left a strong impression on my mind.
After finally deciding on the reward, I had to think about the art and card description. That was easy, since Silk wanted a wedding gift as we attended their fateful day. The art had to be Silk’s final moment where we and Yeena witness his union with Arakaali. Since we cannot do anything to save Silk, we could kill Arakaali as a revenge kill for Silk. As for the flavour text, people that worshipped Arakaali would be very happy about the goddess getting more human essence, hence the line “The Acolytes congratulated the lucky groom for becoming one with the Goddess.”
When the card finally got released, a few friends talked to me and said that they had always wanted to play the build but never got enough currency to do so. I’m very happy that they get to share the experience of playing Arakaali’s Fang.
That’s the end of my story, hope you all have a great New Year and may RNGesus be with you!
The Strategy Wargamer has some kind words for Burden of Command in his most recent update, along with a nice synopsis of how we're trying to merge strategy games with roleplaying games.
