Hello all!

The summary:
- The game is fine and is approaching the finish line.
- In spring, we will have the beta and showcase the gameplay, then
- A demo during Steam Next Fest, and then,
- Almost immediately after, an Early access release

Now, in more detail.

All in all, we could have gotten a release out in March as planned. The game will be practically finished, but it will be a raw game with errors, optimization issues, and balance issues. Probably that is the definition of early access, but in my case, I have many times bought insufficiently polished games during early access, I was often disappointed and did not return to those games again. We decided that we were not ready to charge money for an insufficiently polished product.

It's not that important what the launch of the game is called, early access or late access; we want it to be a complete, full-fledged experience that makes you lose track of time. OK, maybe it will lack a few systems (I am not sure that we will make it in time to implement the change of seasons, for example), but you will be able to finish the game and spend dozens of hours on it.

Why it happened like that with the deadlines? Well, this is gamedev, and the game is largely experimental. Experimenting with the gameplay leads to modifications and lost time. But in the end we did not have to say no to almost anything, and even developed many things further than we anticipated. The amount of new and complex systems that are currently part of Norland would be enough for several games, and we are happy as we seemingly managed to make them all run in a natural symphony.

For similar reasons (experiments!), we spent a long time enforcing radio silence. If at the start of the development we could talk about what we were _planning_ to do with the game, closer to the end we would have wanted to write only about the things the game _already_ had and that wouldn't be changed. Besides, as we focused on game logic, we fell behind in implementing graphics, animation, and all that polish. That just has no point until the gameplay has been stabilized. And the diaries would look weird without screenshots.

Now we have come to the point when the systems are stable and can be shown, so at the same time with this news we are posting a new devlog, in which I will tell you how the world map functions. As we implement the graphics, I will be writing more, and when we implement all of these, we will make a game video with a detailed gameplay showcase.

Before this, we will sign anyone willing for open beta testing, and, as many people have been here and in our Discord for a long time, you will have an edge on the people who come here after the promotional campaign begins.

We will also continue recruiting testers in a bit, as soon as we finish the development of the tutorial system.

Thank you for your support and patience, and a special thank you to our testers!

And for now, we will set the release date on the page to the 3rd quarter of this year, to avoid creating unnecessary suspense and pressure on the team. May the release become a pleasant surprise for you. :)

From March 20th-24th 2023, a number of Gamma Minus team members will be attending the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

The GDC takes place exactly a week after our release, so the timing couldn't have been better. We'll be showcasing the game along with a number of other great games, and rubbing shoulders with the movers and shakers in the industry!

Our participation has been possible by Epic Games, who have selected Rough Justice: '84 to be part of their GDC 2023 Pavilion Showcase.

You can wishlist Rough Justice: '84 and show us some love and by doing so, keep up to date with our development process.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1291860/Rough_Justice_84/



Our discord server is alive! You can join the conversation and hang out with other fans on the discord server and talk directly to us regarding your thoughts and ideas about Rough Justice.

Graphics update! New environment models and lighting, overhaul of the character skin editing mode, and new Drake and Gryphon models with lots of customizable bits.

CHANGELOG

[desktop/vr]
ADDED
- New versions of the Drake and Gryphon characters have been added. All previous built-in characters were also moved to the "Legacy" species group.
- Added support for toggleable cosmetic parts in the Character Menu. Currently the new Drake and Gryphon characters have options for this.

CHANGED
- Graphics updates to environmental models and materials, particularly in the outdoor areas, with the exception of the farmhouse which will be updated in the near future and given interior furnishings.
- Adjusted lighting and post-processing settings for some nicer visuals, including changing to the deferred render pipeline.
- The color customization options for characters has been significantly reworked. Rather than selecting a Pattern and its Colorset, you now select a single Skin which contains information for both. The edit mode for Skins contains the previous functionality for color layer editing, as well as a number of material properties like smoothness and metallic values, to allow for greater customization. Also, you can now disable texture layers within a pattern, adjust the transparency of colors, and sync color fields to edit multiple at the same time. Unfortunately, any previously-created custom colorsets could not be migrated to the new system and would need to be re-created.
- Changed the UI for the configurable body parts settings in the Character Menu to use a checkbox/radio style rather than being all dropdowns.
- Increased the maximum draw distance setting for vegetation in the Performance tab. The default value remains the same (100m).
- The hanging plank in the stable was changed to make it only mountable from one side instead of both, to simplify the animation setup.
- Tweaked some animations for the player-on-top Missionary and Riding positions for better results with different genital orientations and cock sizes.
- Adjusted some physics settings to improve stability for cocks and tails in some situations where they would get wedged in geometry.

FIXED
- Fixed a bug where the time of day was not being applied properly on startup.

REMOVED
- Eye Type selection has been temporarily removed, and will be updated to use the new material setup and re-implemented in the near future.
- The "Tree Billboards" distance slider was removed, as tree rendering is handled a little differently and no longer uses billboards. You can use the LOD Bias slider to control the render distance of trees.

KNOWN ISSUES
- Wetness painting on characters is not currently working in some scenarios and mesh surfaces.
- Setting the partner's cock size to maximum can cause odd belly bulge behaviour in some positions.
- The "Suck My Cock" position when sitting on the crate can have alignment/clipping issues with the partner's mouth.

NOTES
- Any custom characters made before v1.4.1 that used the "Customizable" mode for either the Materials or Configurable Parts modules will not be compatible with this build of the game, and will need these modules to be updated in this version of the importer and re-built.
- Due to changes to the handling for Cock Scale and Ball Scale, any previously saved values for these fields have been reset.
- The Saddle and Belly Rig equipment models have not yet been updated for the new Drake and Gryphon characters - these activities are still available but the meshes for the equipment will be invisible.

[desktop]
KNOWN ISSUES
- The "Servicing" position does not yet have actions for the partner if they have a male slit instead of a sheath, and the existing "sheath" actions result in some buggy behaviour. Proper male-slit interactions will be added in the future.

[vr]
CHANGED
- Increased the size of the menu tablet, to make selecting small UI elements easier.
- The kneel action is now bound to clicking in the right thumbstick instead of pressing it downward, to prevent accidental presses when turning.
- The deadzone settings for the right touchpad on Vive controllers was adjusted to help reduce unintended inputs.

FIXED
- Fixed a bug where launching the game in VR mode for the first time (with no save files) would cause an error and a duplicate body mesh for the player.

[importer]
ADDED
- The Configurable Parts module was expanded to include support for Sheath types (to support a character with both a male slit and sheath) as well as generic Cosmetic types. Additionally, there is now a Groups field for configuring which types of configurable parts your character uses along with the heading name that appears in the character menu, and some other properties. Individual body parts can also now specify "Exclude Objects" which are GameObjects that will be disabled when that body part is active, as the inverse to the existing "Include Objects".
- Added a flag to the Cock module for "Kinematic When Sheathed", which defaults to True which was the previous behaviour. Unsetting this flag will allow you to have better control over the cock's physics using the Unsheath expression animation, so it is not always stiff and rigid when fully sheathed.

CHANGED
- The Materials and Textures module has been significantly reworked to support the new Skins system. Any characters that were previously using the Customizable mode to allow for custom color layers will need to be updated to use Skins.
- The CharacterMaterials component was removed, as its previous functionality now lives in the Materials module of the CharacterImporter. You may have a (Missing Script) component on your top-level importer object that should be removed, if you weren't using the CharacterImporter prefab - otherwise it will have automatically been removed as it is no longer in the prefab.
- The Cock Scale and Ball Scale handling is now expected to be defined in animation clips in the Expressions module, similarly to how Breast Scale worked previously. Additionally, there is now a default value slider in the Configurable Parts module for each of these scaleable objects to define the normalized time (0.0-1.0) of the animation that should be used as the starting scale.
- The Left Shoulder and Right Shoulder fields in the Limb Setup module no longer appear for Feral characters as they are unused.
- Changed some behaviour of the DriveBlendShape component, used for the penetrable hole colliders. Instead of calculating distance along an arbitrary axis, it now works only with the positive distance along the local y-axis, since this is how all the collider prefabs are set up. Additionally, this component now executes while in the Importer project (in Play mode) for easier testing, and the physics joint setup for the individual colliders has been simplified in all prefabs.
- Breast scaling is now properly supported for feral characters.
- When auto-populating limbs from an Avatar for an Anthro character, the Chest avatar bone is now used as a fallback for the Chest importer field, if the UpperChest avatar bone is not assigned.
- Compression settings on some Example scene textures were changed and example output fdc files were removed in order to reduce the importer package size and import time.

FIXED
- Fixed an issue where fingertip colliders were generated with incorrect sizes/positions if the character model had been scaled.
- Fixed a bug where IgnoreColliders would not correctly ignore all colliders on a GameObject, if more than one Collider component existed on it.
- Added some missing help wording for the "Front Of Thighs" touch target for Anthro characters.

REMOVED
- The "Has Sheath" flag in the Cock module has been removed, as this is now determined automatically by whether the Cock Unsheath expression animation has been assigned.

NOTES
- Due to some large importer changes in this build, it is recommended to back up your project before upgrading. Any characters that used the Customizable mode in the Materials or Configurable Parts modules will lose data in those modules and need to be reconfigured to use the new systems. Note that Eye Types have not yet been updated to the new material setup.
- The "CharacterImporter" prefab has been deprecated, and any new characters created with the setup window will no longer use it. This prefab will be removed in a later build, so you should right-click on the CharacterImporter object in your Hierarchy window and select Prefab -> Unpack. Unpacking the prefab can also help with performance issues with complex importer configurations.

Become a supporter for access to the latest alpha builds:
https://www.patreon.com/softscale
https://subscribestar.adult/softscale

Or, keep following the game here on Steam for the periodic free public builds!

Removing annual pass and changing the game to a paid game.
Those with annual pass will still get 1,000 moons per day until end of your annual pass (compared to 500 moons for all other players).
Sharing islands and cross platform backup/restore are now available to everyone.

Dear Scraps players

Scraps will soon be delisted from the Steam store.

Scraps has been selling near zero copies for quite some time, and although I've kept it running for a long while, I can't keep supporting it forever. Apart from keeping the main server running, eventually some OS or hardware update is bound to come out that breaks something in Scraps, and it's running on such an old version of the Unity engine that it'll be impossible to fix without a huge amount of work to upgrade. I don't feel it's fair to continue selling a game that's unsupported.

Soon Scraps will no longer be available to purchase, and the remaining USA server that I keep running will be shut down.

Thankfully Scraps does not require a central server to keep multiplayer working. If you already own the game, you will still be able to download it in your Steam library and play it, and although there will be no permanent official multiplayer server running, anyone should still be able to host a server - be it either a dedicated server, or a game they're playing in that they've set to allow others to join. On LAN or Internet as always. Those systems run on Steam's own back-end.

Thank you all so much for the great memories of making and playing Scraps: Modular Vehicle Combat.



Update: I've applied a 90% discount closing down sale price.

The world map was one of the most contradictory and dangerous points in the general game design. As the game is about a city ruled by elites, a most important goal for them is power, not just survival. This requires a map with other cities like ours and elite families that are fighting for power.

Which game has a city builder combined with a developed world map? There are not a lot of examples, so we had to invent and correct many things.

In this way, the systems described below are planned so as to not distract the player from the game on the local map, but also to provide the player with new points where his efforts could be applied, and where he could interact with the world.



The map is split into kingdoms, each run by a noble family. They can subjugate each other and become vassals, pillage each other, and even destroy other settlements completely, leaving smoking ruins (that can be repopulated later on).



Besides, one can act with more finesse, using actions like bribing and seduction to trigger internal conflicts, up to an heir's rebellion, and also shadowy actions that are carried out by local cutthroats for money: these are the kidnapping of a lord, the theft of gold or books.



Communication between cities is not telepathic. Some tasks, such as matchmaking or seduction, require your lord's personal presence in a foreign city, while for other tasks, such as trade or bribery, you can send an envoy on behalf of the king. However, this would require paper, and it is quite expensive.

A kidnapped lord can be used as a valuable worker or a teacher, or you can use his knowledge and build something important, if your lords are a little dumb for that. There are also more cruel and brutal things you can do to your prisoners, as this is the early Middle Ages, after all. And, of course, you can release him for the ransom that his king will be ready to pay.

It's important to remember that other kings can perform all these actions against you as well (and against each other) when there are bad diplomatic relations. Norland's relationships are just that, interpersonal relationships between kings that can depend on many factors: different worldviews, relations to a third party (for example, a king will dislike the enemies of his friend), marriages between heirs, how big the trade is, and just a successful joint hunt.



The world map also allows for events like trade offers, marriage proposals, and also rebellions and conflicts, in which the player can support this side or the other. The map is alive: the kings visit each other, get married, weave intrigues, force others to be vassals, and create large kingdoms. Once a day, the player gets a news report for his neighbors. Somebody got executed, somewhere has seen a rebellion start, somewhere has an epidemic, and somewhere, someone has gotten married.

The smaller settlements on the map are villages - that regularly pay their kings a tribute with their resources, - and bandit camps. The camps are formed by the criminals who leave your city. The bandits can burn your villages and foreign ones (creating conflict) and even attack your city. They can take lords prisoners, but bandits can also be hired for the army or bought off for a while.



However, the biggest threat is the Renegades (working title), big armies of nomads from the West that burn cities down to the ground, sacrificing all inhabitants to their Dead God. They can be stopped either when you help neighbors stand against them or when you unite Norland under your crown, gathering all forces into a single fist. Or maybe you will find a third, unexpected way to solve the problem - as our testers often do. The choice is yours!

As for plans. Right now the map is built by us in Tiled and then colored manually. However, we are preparing a platform for the engine to paint any custom map automatically. So, after the release we'll try to make it so that you can load your own created maps into the game, give your settlements their names, write their history (in the information tab of the settlement menu), prescribe the lore in the books, and thus create your worlds within the game..

• We have fixed a softlock that happened in the dialogs when playing with gamepad.
  
• We have fixed a bug that caused dialogs to skip a sentence using gamepad.
  
• We have fixed some visual errors in the map.
  
• We have fixed a bug in the fuel button of the crafters.

Face your foes with bravery and boldness, be confident in yourself and in those around you, and be smart enough to know when it's a losing battle, and you will gain the respect of Solaak the Drakewarden Ranger. This noble Kalashtar rides atop his mentor Tempest, a fearsome lightning drake, and the pair are always together both on the ground and in the air. And now they are together in the Idle Champions formation!

Solaak is a Support Champion who excels at ranged attacks, as well as aiding others who attack from a distance. Their shots are even more inspiring as he fires while riding his fierce dragon companion! Once unlocked, you can find this ranger in Slot 2 opposite Celeste.

Learn more about Solaak in our Champion Spotlight!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where card cost and/or damage modifiers weren’t properly saved/loaded
  
• Fixed a UI issue where descriptions were overlapping titles in certain scenarios
  
• Fixed a VFX issue with Anointed Urn's ranged attack

THE FIRST PATCH IS REAL!

• Fixed Nations not attacking each other when Revolts were disabled
  
• Fixed manual alliance action not working on some nations
  
• Fixed brush size not being properly changed
  
• Fixed God Mode button tooltips
  
• Fixed Nation name typos in World Map scenarios
  
• Removed empty nation and added Luxembourg to World Map scenario