Feb 28, 2023

Lost Ark - timmyopa

Heroes of Arkesia,

Fight for more than just glory when Tulubik Battlefield launches this March. Select your Faction, earn rewards, and determine the fate of Rowen in 96-player (48 v 48) Realm versus Realm matches. It’s time to prepare for war. Will you maintain order or unleash rebellion?

Pick a Faction

Sylmael Crystals once made Rowen a prosperous continent. Now, that same precious resource only brings pandemonium. The war-torn land is divided into two conflicting Factions — Preigelli and Liebertane. The machine-loving mercenaries of Preigelli fight for a society with strict rules, while the pirates and mages of Liebertane pursue a lawless land. Rowen may have temporarily been forgotten from Arkesia’s history, but one of these Factions will always be remembered as the victor at Tulubik Battlefield.

Earn Faction XP & Rewards

Reach item Level 1445 for the chance to start Rowen’s world quest and pick your side. Once you’ve completed the “Cataclysmic Eliyabeck” world quest, you will join the fight for your Faction. Welcome to the seemingly endless stage of strife.

Earn Faction XP through activities like co-op quests, plus taking out opposing Faction’s members, to progress through 15 Faction Ranks for Sylmael Crystals which can be exchanged for valuable rewards like honing materials, card packs, mounts, skins, and more. From Rank 10 on, your XP earned throughout a week (starting at 6 AM local time on maintenance day) will be recorded. Changing Factions after Rank 11 will result in an XP penalty and possibly a lower Rank.

Faction Rank is also reflected in player skins throughout Rowen. Support a side, strive for higher Ranks, and wear your decorated Faction skins with pride.

Determine the Fate of Rowen in Tulubik Battlefield

Capture bases and defeat foes to prove your Faction’s supremacy in 96-player (48 v 48) Realm versus Realm matches. Each base nets your Faction Magick over time. The more bases you conquer, the faster your side’s Magick will increase. Harness more Magick than the opposing Faction to take total control of the battlefield and win.

You can also increase your own contribution level to tip the scales through individual actions like taking down opponents, capturing bases, and even materializing a powerful spirit knight to support your side on the field. How will you make a difference?

After the final sliver of Magick is obtained and the battle has been decided, you’ll earn rewards such as Faction XP and Sylmael Crystals based on your performance.

Schedule

Both Factions will only engage in war during certain times of the week, so keep an eye out for in-game announcements.

Regular Matches

Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday: 8:00 PM local time
Saturday and Sunday: 3:00 PM local time

When 96-player Regular Matches are unavailable, you can instead join 30 to 96-player Friend Matches. Friend Matches feature the same rules, except teams are randomly assigned and Sylmael Crystals are not be rewarded.

Co-op quests

Tuesday - Sunday: 8:30 PM local time
Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday: 10:30 PM local time
Additional time slot on Saturday and Sunday: 3:30 PM local time

Requirements

You need to be Faction Rank 3 and Item Level 1490 to enter Tulubik Battlefield. To play the new mode, click on the “Rowen Battlefield” icon on the minimap (under Welcome Challenge) or go to the battlefield entrance at either Regarbank Great Plains or Fighter’s Haven. You can also enter from other places like major cities, always available islands, and your Stronghold.

Rewards

Exchange your spoils (Sylmael Crystals) in Rowen for the following rewards:

Random Rowen Collectible Chest
Kottbulle Dish
Sylmael Honing Packs
Sylmael Honing Support Material Pack
Song of Wolves
Victory Dance Emote
Legendary Combat Engraving Recipe Selection Chest
Rowen-Style Schnapps
Osphere Emoticon Pack
Legendary Card Pack Selection Chest
Legendary Combat Engraving Recipe Selection Chest
Hero’s Reward Chest
Storhorn Mount Chest
Great Epic Reward Chest
Grerat Dominion’s Reward Chest
Great Legend’s Reward Chest
Rowen Card Pack
Honor Shard Pouch
Great Honor Leapstone
Marvelous Honor Leapstone
Crystallized Destruction Stone
Obliteration Stone
Crystallized Guardian Stone
Protection Stone
Ancient Platinum Coin

Show Your Support Outside of Arkesia

Continue the showdown between order and rebellion outside of Arkesia through our Discord and forums:

Discord Roles

Select a role in our Discord community to show your support for either Preigelli or Liebertane.
Join your fellow Heroes in a Discord channel for coordination, strategy, and some friendly banter.

Forum Avatar Updates

You can also update your Avatar in the community Forums to represent your Faction.
Boost morale for your compatriots before entering Tulubik Battlefield.

Look forward to an exact release date in the coming weeks, but don’t let the opposing Faction get a head start. Make your preparations now. Thanks for your support and we’ll see you on the battlefield!

Feb 28, 2023

LET'S TALK ABOUT RELEASE DATES

Brigador Killers - dudeglove

Back in July 2022 we wrote that we wanted to put some form of Brigador Killers out in 2023. We have recently decided that the game will come out first as a build on Itch.io in the coming months. Assuming that period on Itch goes well, BK will then come to Early Access on Steam in 2024, and then eventually 1.0 with post-release support.

The Itch page is up though there are no builds of the game to get your hands on just yet. You can take a look at it here. Price is still TBD.

🤔WHY WE’RE DOING THIS

We’ll limit the list of reasons to four broad points. First, expectations. As indie developers go, we’re old and remember what Early Access on Steam used to be like and what the public accepted as early access. If we were to repeat with BK on this storefront now what we did with Brigador back in 2015, we’re confident a lot of people on here would be disappointed because the game simply won’t be at the expected quality level of an “early access game” in 2023.

Second, risk. When a game is released on Steam, the platform puts your game in front of a lot of customers every second – but only for a limited time. Also, Steam is still the most widely used platform for PC gaming. We want to make sure we can make the biggest splash possible.

Third, scale. When BK is released to the public, dull yet highly important things like bug reports will shoot up. We already know that keeping Brigador functional on current operating systems like Windows 10 has been bumpy, and with Windows 11 we expect more of the same for both Brigador and BK. By exposing BK to a smaller pool of players first, the hope is that we can prevent ourselves from being overwhelmed by the number of people with technical issues, as well as the occasional player that is somehow able to run our game on a government-issue laptop from the early 2000s running Windows 8.1.

Fourth, burnout. We appreciate the hype from a lot of you for BK but please also understand that we don’t want to destroy ourselves in the process of making it. Brigador already went through that process in 2016 with its initial release, and it’s not an exaggeration that it took years to undo the damage that it caused.

Brigador Killers is not only meant to be a sequel to Brigador but also internally is the end result of a lot of lessons learned – and what we learned with the first game was we enjoyed the community feedback, which Itch will help us with.

We realize Itch isn’t going to be for everyone, and that’s okay. It’ll still come to Steam and GOG regardless.

🙋‍♂️ANSWERING THE QUESTION OF “IF I BUY IT ON ITCH FIRST, WILL YOU GIVE ME A STEAM KEY FOR IT LATER?”

Yes. Itch even has that functionality built in. When the game is ready for Steam, Itch owners will get their Steam key.

📰WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING WITH BK

On the programming end of things, lua scripting has been added into the engine. This is going to significantly increase what we’ll be able to do with the overall gameplay of BK. If you’re familiar with Brigador, everything about the in-level maps in that game is decided the moment a level loads. That means a level will always have the same layout of buildings, the same spawns in set locations, the same music, and so on. We now have the ability to change a lot of that, though we’ll save an explainer post on this topic for later.

Design wise, with the new systems like morale and infantry movement, the amount of game data that needs to be audited is substantial. To give you an idea, here’s a glimpse at the current list of values that can be configured just for the morale system, and that these are things that can be set per AI-controlled unit.

Because there’s so much data to deal with, things like the armor & pierce system mentioned in the August 2022 post are going to be pared down from eight tiers. As much fun as it is to have a broad range of numbers to play with, BK is ultimately not going to be a hyper-detailed MilSim like the Arma series.

In terms of visuals, our lead artist Jack recently put up a twitter thread explaining how to signal to the player which wheeled vehicles are going to be drivable and which ones are not. Consider these two as an example:

Which one do you think you can drive as the player? If you chose the one on the left but not the right, congratulations – but pause for a moment and consider why. The obvious go-to is that the roof has been taken off, but also note that where the driver would usually sit is now occupied by an optical array, meaning there’s no space for a human to sit. The intention is that this wordlessly tells the player that, although this is identifiable as a vehicle, it is not intended for you. In addition, it serves as a tease for the loreheads out there to speculate as to the function of the vehicle on the right and what implications that has for the Brigador universe.

🏃‍♂️BEFORE WE GO…

We are surveying our userbase to see what kinds of computer hardware and software they are using to play Brigador with. Participation in the survey is anonymous. The information gathered isn’t very exciting but it will be incredibly helpful to us as it will tell us what benchmark to aim for with BK. Click here to take the survey and get your response in before March 31st 2023.

Feb 28, 2023

FAQ, acknowledgements, and how to hack the game

Picross for a Cause - Teagles

Hi guys! This announcement will serve as a FAQ for some of the questions I've seen on the forums, as well as giving some acknowledgements and a tip on how to modify the game files.

FAQ

Is the game still being supported?
No. I released it 2.5 years ago and frankly I don't even remember how to push an update. And after my blunder where I accidentally reset some players' progress, that's probably for the best.
Are all of the puzzles logically deducible?
Almost. Puzzle 15x15-42 (Crescent) has an error that requires you to guess (there shouldn't be a cell filled in in the center). But besides that, every puzzle is deducible. Some of the mural tiles can be tricky and require thinking a few cells ahead.
Can I migrate my progress to another machine?
Yes! But not through Steam Cloud. See below for how to hack the game.
Is there a Linux/Mac version?
No. I'm a PC kinda guy.

Acknowledgements

Thank you very much to everyone who posted a review! I read them all and they're very nice.
Thank you to masterthewarrior, for your pleasant screenshots to populate the Community Hub.
Thank you to FakeSecret, for your extremely comprehensive guide.
Thank you to Dohi64, for your abundant positivity on the Discussions page. I hope you're still blessing other indie developers.
Thank you to John Walker writing from Buried Treasure for his thoughtful review of the game. Go check out his page for some Indie game recs: https://buried-treasure.org/
Lastly, thank you all for playing.

How to Hack the Game

If you want to complete puzzles without actually putting in the effort, get all the achievements with no sweat, change the sound effects or soundtrack, or migrate your work to another machine, then this guide is for you.
For each of these actions, you'll first need to find the folder where your Picross for a Cause information is stored, which defaults to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Picross for a Cause.

Marking puzzles complete
1. Navigate to Picross for a Cause\Release\Collections.
2. In each of these folders, there is a file called "CollectionInfo.xml". Inside this file, each puzzle in that collection is listed, followed by its difficulty and completion status (or unlocked status and completion status, if it's a mural tile).
3. For each puzzle you wish to mark completed, replace <Completed>false</Completed> with <Completed>true</Completed>. If it's a mural tile (mural tiles are represented by an X and Y instead of a name), you will also need to replace <Unlocked>false</Unlocked> with <Unlocked>true</Unlocked>. Changing any of the other fields (Difficulty, PuzzlesPerPage, string, etc) in these files may corrupt the game.
Getting all achievements instantly
Simply go through all of the CollectionInfo.xml files mentioned above and mark every puzzle as completed.
Editing sounds
1. Get your desired sound effect as a .wav file and use an online converter to change it to a .xnb file.
2. Navigate to Picross for a Cause\Release\Content\Sounds.
3. The 3 sound effects are menu button press (ButtonPress.xnb), puzzle drag tick (Tick.xnb), and puzzle completion trumpet (PuzzleComplete.xnb) (listening to that trumpet now, it's rather offensive to the ears. Sorry!).
4. Replace the old sound file by adding "_old" to the name of the old sound and naming your new sound the EXACT name of the old sound file and placing it in the Sounds directory. For example, if you want to replace the puzzle completion effect, rename the original to PuzzleComplete_old.xnb, name your new sound PuzzleComplete.xnb, and place it in the Sounds folder. It is important that the name matches exactly, otherwise the game will crash when it tries to load the sound.
Migrating to a different machine
1. Download Picross for a Cause on the new machine.
2. Replace the new machine's Picross for a Cause\Release\Collections folder with the old machine's Picross for a Cause\Release\Collections folder.
Changing corrupted settings
If the resolution got messed up somehow and you can't fix it from within the game, open Picross for a Cause\Release\Settings\Info.xml and change the values to something appropriate for your screen.

Feb 28, 2023

Patchnote [22.02.2023]

STALCRAFT: X - Gorodskovich

Various minor updates

This update includes various changes that will be described below.

Reforged Airdrops

From now on, each participant needs to start hacking the container to take part in the event. In case of death or leaving the capture zone, the player stops being a participant. The reward is distributed equally among all participants after the container is hacked.

If players participate in the event as part of a squad, each member of the squad also needs to start
hacking the container. The squad's share of the reward is calculated from all of its members participating in the event. The squad reward can be claimed from the container by any squad member.

Animations, Models, and Sounds

The animations and sounds of all versions of HK G3A1, PP-19 'Bizon-2-01', SR-2M 'Veresk' have been updated.

Quests

The ability to cross paths with other players has been removed in the Beast Dungeon lobby.

Other updates and bug fixes

Added the ability to paint the PKP "Pecheneg".
The “Bubble” in the "Red Forest" from now won’t send players in textures.
Tarmac appeared too early in the "Bar", before completing the story.
“Sailor” in his quest could send the player to the wrong location.
Tapes for “Studeny” did not dissapear from players inventory after completing the questline.
The safe zone on the session map "Streets of Pripyat" extended beyond the building.
Colors on the item durability progress bar have been changed.
The percentage of maximum equipment durability is now displayed to the tenths in the repair window.
Songs on the radio have been changed.
Fixed the rotation of the ally marker along with the mini-map rotation.
Removed the hint "Can be hung on the back" from from devices for signal search.
Fixed the incorrect position, invisibility, and incompatibility of some modules on the M1A side rails, given out during the story.

Thank you for tuning in,
and best of luck on your hunts in the Zone!