Hello, everyone!


First of all, news of how we cope with the ongoing war in Ukarine. Russia keeps its missile strike schedule making a large attack every two weeks, and some smaller ones when it pleases. The last big attack was on February 10, with 71 missiles (61 were downed by AA fire, 10 around Kyiv). Fortunately, there was no major damage in Kyiv and the power supply did not suffer much.

On the biright side, last week was the first week without the power cuts - for the first time since October 2022 Ukraine has enough power supply. Of course this may change, and we have our power generator at the ready, but this is definitely very good news. We hope that the power of the light will be victorious both in terms of power supply and in the war in general.

Also, I would like to share with you our latest updates:

Indie Cup Celebration 2023

Learn more about the Indie Cup Celebration Steam event:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1474770/view/3655270724997807968?l=english

Units In Spirit of Liberty #7 | Finnish fighter aircraft

Learn more about the Finnish Fighter aircraft throughout the Winter War, Continuation War, and Lapland War.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1474770/view/3655269458089887058?l=english

Scenario overview #4: Finnish Invasion of the Karelian Isthmus

Learn more about the first scenario of the Continuation War - the battles on the Karelian Isthmus:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1474770/view/3655270724994267700?l=english

With Best Regards from Kyiv
Starni Games team

Good day! Or evening, or afternoon. Whichever phase of our planet's rotation you’re currently in 🌎🌍🌏

I hope you had a charming Valentine's day 💝 Tom and I made a carrot cake 🍰 and had a long walk in a forest 😌 Oh, wait, that was yesterday... Ah, right, we were fixing bugs on the 14th of Feb, very romantic too 😂🥰

Fixing bugs, you ask? Yes! We've been hard at work preparing our codebase for the upcoming features. So, refactoring, cleanups, optimizations. All the good but invisible work 😅

We’ve ported our graphics engine from OpenGL to Vulkan, finally catching up with the times, and getting some sweet performance improvements. Grass in particular is now twice as fast, and with a screen full of it on the Steam Deck, Tiny Glade runs at around 84 FPS 🥳 That still drops to 30 FPS in a complex build, but we’ll be optimizing some more 💪

We made walls respond to how quickly they’re being drawn, so you easily get both smooth and sharp corners (we also reduced input latency, so drawing feels good even at lower framerates).



And most importantly, we made sure sheep cannot get stuck on rocky terrain 🐑🌂



We also had our very first super tiny playtest with close friends and family. We’re learning how to run playtests in preparation for an eventual beta, and this gave us a chance to dip our toes in the water 🧜‍♂️

While the game is still feature-incomplete and rough around the edges, it was fun to see the vastly different things everyone made: castles, cottages, ruins, wizard towers. The craziest and most intricate build was made by my mom. I love seeing her creative process reflected in this in-game timelapse!



Aaaaand, that's all for now, folks 👐

Have a delightful weekend, and we'll see each other again soon 😊

Ana & the Tiny Glade team

- Adjusted a few collision boxes for meshes.
- Corrected an audio glitch with the S.L.I.M.E. Store.
- Corrected glitch with interactables.

Thank you for your play and valuable suggestions. We have updated the game version as follows：

1.Added the "memory appreciation" function! Support automatic video playback
2.Reduced game difficulty.
3.Fixed the problem that the win7 system cannot play and the black screen problem.（Note: 32-bit system is not included）
4.The one-handed mode is added. Now you can use the mouse to clear the whole process。
5.Added the space bar to skip the plot instead of the mouse。
6.Fixed the problem of language localization and several other optimizations。

Welcome to the next Space Mechanic Simulator Developer Insights. The last few days have been working on updates and controller support for the prologue.


In between developer entries, there was one update with the number 1.2.7. It introduced quite a few improvements, including new rover physics and quite a few optimizations on Mars. The prologue's support does not end there. We are in the process of creating support for controllers. The goal is clear. We want to give you the opportunity to play SMS the way you want. So if you prefer a game pad, you will be able to play comfortably on it.



Thank you for the warm reception to our prologue, at the time of writing this text the average rating is 86%. We know that the game is not perfect, however, we are glad you liked it. After releasing and patching the most important problems. We returned to the preparation of the full version of the game - will appear sooner than you expect. With the experience of the prologue in our minds, we are confident that you will also like it even more.



As always, we’d like to thank everyone once more for supporting us and sharing your feedback on our forums, social networks.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/429380/Space_Mechanic_Simulator/




That is it for today.
See you soon!

Welcome to more developer diaries dedicated to Truck Mechanic: Dangerous Paths. Today we want to touch on the important topic of UI for you. We are considering which direction to go. Is it more minimalist, or on the foundations of the old one to update its appearance.




Which option is more accessible to you? An expansion of what you might have seen in the prologue - served up in a better way? Our idea is quite simple, for example, the mission objectives will be activated by a button so that when we want to completely sink into the game they don't take up unnecessary space on the screen. You will be able to activate them at any time, so that the panel will appear and disappear as you see fit. Or something more minimalistic based on simple, easy to read icons?




Both options have their pros and cons. For the moment, we're betting on improving what you saw in the prologue. Improving by the ability to hide those complex panels, and making it more friendly to the players. It must be simple, readable and understandable. Convey specific information that will be needed during the tasks. On this occasion, we would like to know your opinions. Maybe you have some interesting suggestions? We would love to hear them!

We encourage you to actively comment and share your ideas with us. Remember that all the screenshots shown above are from a WIP build, they don’t reflect the final version of the game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/995680/Truck_Mechanic_Dangerous_Paths/



Thank you
Atomic Jelly

Welcome to more developer diaries dedicated to Truck Mechanic: Dangerous Paths. Today we want to touch on the important topic of UI for you. We are considering which direction to go. Is it more minimalist, or on the foundations of the old one to update its appearance.




Which option is more accessible to you? An expansion of what you might have seen in the prologue - served up in a better way? Our idea is quite simple, for example, the mission objectives will be activated by a button so that when we want to completely sink into the game they don't take up unnecessary space on the screen. You will be able to activate them at any time, so that the panel will appear and disappear as you see fit. Or something more minimalistic based on simple, easy to read icons?




Both options have their pros and cons. For the moment, we're betting on improving what you saw in the prologue. Improving by the ability to hide those complex panels, and making it more friendly to the players. It must be simple, readable and understandable. Convey specific information that will be needed during the tasks. On this occasion, we would like to know your opinions. Maybe you have some interesting suggestions? We would love to hear them!

We encourage you to actively comment and share your ideas with us. Remember that all the screenshots shown above are from a WIP build, they don’t reflect the final version of the game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/995680/Truck_Mechanic_Dangerous_Paths/



Thank you
Atomic Jelly

With the update to version 1.39, the new campaign mode will be integrated into Empires and Tribes.
You now have the opportunity to take on the role of the heir to the throne of Finncaster and assert yourself in a world of competing principalities. Build new villages on the outskirts of your dominion or expand existing settlements and solve the tasks of the new quest givers, such as the Council Elder, to expand your sphere of influence. A world of 16 connected regions awaits you, of which the first 6 regions are unlocked with this update. In each region, specific main and side quests await you, which are subordinate to a larger storyline. You can trade between the regions and switch between the regions at will via Direct- and Quicktravel, for example to further expand a village after the construction plans for further buildings in another region have been unlocked. We plan to gradually expand the world with more regions in the coming updates.
Also, with this update we have integrated the interior models for the residential buildings and fixed some bugs.

Your team from Empires and Tribes


Version 1.39

- Added new connected campaign maps
- Added traveling between regions via Quicktravel and Directtravel
- Added passive production in regions while player is in other regions
- Added storage system for connected maps
- Added inter-regional trade between regions
- Added new main quest and side quests for the campaign
- Added new NPC's for the campaign
- Added new quest items: News and Bulls
- Added new menu subitem in the quest menu for the campaign quests
- The position of the surrounding towns is now shown in the compass in the campaign maps
- Added interior models for the Lv2 and Lv3 dwellings
- Revised model of wooden bridges

- Fixed a bug that could lead to a crash when building walls
- Fixed a bug that could lead to a crash when building wooden towers
- Fixed a bug that could lead to a crash when units were fighting
- Fixed a bug that could lead to incorrect attack behavior of units when buildings were selected as attack target
- Fixed a bug in the pathfinding calculation that could cause residents to take large detours
- Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when building the Copper Weapon Forge if the player was in the forge while it was being completed
- Fixed a bug that prevented enemy buildings from being selected as attack targets in the combat menu
- Fixed a bug that could cause residents to freeze at the fireplaces in the walking animation
- Fixed a bug in the model of the lumberjack Lv2

Welcome to the next Space Mechanic Simulator Developer Insights. The last few days have been working on updates and controller support for the prologue.


In between developer entries, there was one update with the number 1.2.7. It introduced quite a few improvements, including new rover physics and quite a few optimizations on Mars. The prologue's support does not end there. We are in the process of creating support for controllers. The goal is clear. We want to give you the opportunity to play SMS the way you want. So if you prefer a game pad, you will be able to play comfortably on it.



Thank you for the warm reception to our prologue, at the time of writing this text the average rating is 86%. We know that the game is not perfect, however, we are glad you liked it. After releasing and patching the most important problems. We returned to the preparation of the full version of the game - will appear sooner than you expect. With the experience of the prologue in our minds, we are confident that you will also like it even more.



As always, we’d like to thank everyone once more for supporting us and sharing your feedback on our forums, social networks.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/429380/Space_Mechanic_Simulator/

That is it for today.
See you soon!

Even though the Next Fest is over, we're going to keep the demo live on the store page for a while longer. So if you haven't had a chance to try the demo yet, you've still got time.

Thanks to everyone who has already downloaded the demo (over 7000 of you!), and also huge thanks to anyone that took the time to leave feedback.

It has also been great to see some of the coverage Valfaris: Mecha Therion has received lately. Here are a few highlights:



https://youtu.be/QPOI51PrhF4

https://youtu.be/VLMaX6dSFmE

https://youtu.be/qUu2brOhUNQ

Finally for this post, please enjoy a couple of teaser gifs from the game's work-in-progress intro:






https://store.steampowered.com/app/1647920/Valfaris_Mecha_Therion/