Knock-knock, adventurers!

We’re happy to see you again!

A lot of interesting things happened this week – for example, an update was released where we added a lot of new animations, fixed some events and items, as well as introduced the new karma display and much more. You can read more in this post here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1232580/view/6383330087933065264


To begin with, let's prepare for the upcoming holidays - Easter is coming, and we’ve prepared a small interactive event for you. In our social networks, Mortis has hidden a spell that will help you defeat Sigismund. He divided it into separate words. If you collect all 9 parts, you will be able to defeat the corrupt monarch and at the same time get a game key!


Our Twitter: https://twitter.com/RedBoonstudios

Our Discord: https://discord.gg/7vXH5RGbJ2

Our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS9cNulwJPvziO_CaBFS1Kg

First hint is already up on our Youtube channel!

On April 9, we’ll post a document where you can write down the spell and receive your prize in exchange. So here’s the Easter hunt we’ve come up with for you – a hunt with Mortis!



Well, there’s still enough work ahead, although we’re at the final stage of polishing the game and we are busy with something secret too (you’ll like it, we promise!)


Sigismund and the Cultist continue evolving under the steady hand of our animation department. They both have acquired yet another form and are ready to scare us and take away our health points.

For example, Sigismund has very sharp eyes in his diabolical form. It’s impossible to avoid or hide from him. All one can do is… attack with all their might!

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This Cultist lived near water for so long that he grew tentacles. Trypophobes had best not look at him – our artists tried their best while designing him! However, the cannibals among the cultists would definitely sell their souls once again for “seafood cocktail” like him.

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Our artists haven’t been working hard on the icons for so long in vain, as now they’re almost ready to appear in the game in all their glory. But we'll leave that for future updates, as work on them is in full swing.

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While we were visiting different locations, one of our artists slipped away from us and drew some more card art. What specific cards do you think these pictures are for? Write your guesses in the comments!

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That's it for today. Thank you for staying with us on this long and thrilling journey.

Don't forget about hunting with Mortis, come chat in our social networks, and see you in the next diary!

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Fixed bug which would not allow the player to play the game from the beginning again

I am back to working on the hard to define task of "game feel". This involves making the things you do over and over feel… good.

One of my main playtesters is a friend I've known since 1st grade. I've played every generation of video game with him. We've been comrades in arms in n64 goldeneye, being repeatedly gunned down by his older brother, I think we actually got into a fight one time over Tekken3 or maybe some Dreamcast boxing game, and we've shut down entire battlefield servers as helicopter pilot & copilot.

So when I send him a build, I can easily tell if it "feels good" or not. The last time he played, it was clear something was missing from the minigun. He sent me back a gif from Blackhawk Down and said "this is how I want to feel". Alright. Mission accepted.

Game feel is more of an art than a science... The best way to improve it is just to experiment with a bunch of things.

So let's get our paint out and Bob Ross this minigun, shall we?


lol I am getting SNES controller vibes from that paint palette


Looking back at this gif it's hard to tell I'm shooting. And yes this was an older build with a different camera view.

Screen shake is a common game feel tweak- you make the camera move slightly in reaction to powerful events in the game scene.



So much better already. even without audio it's clear when you're shooting.

Thankfully the asset we're using for camera work (Cinemachine) has a nice system for adding screenshake impulses to events. All we have to do is define the rotation + position waves that shake the camera.



As you can see, the camera shake involves 3 different frequencies rotating on the 3 separate axes. This gives a good shake effect that feels natural without having a weird oscillation in only one direction.

I decided not to use any position shake, since that tends to be more jarring than rotation.


Part of the issue I wanted to fix was how lame it felt when you shot right next to an enemy, and nothing happened. The easy improvement here was to add splash damage to the rounds. So now when a shot impacts a surface, it tries to add damage directly to what it hit, and then uses the existing splash damage system to add damage to anything in a 2 meter radius around it.

The other part of this was that the rounds would go EXACTLY where you were aiming. This sounds like a good thing, but it looked and felt strange. So I added an angle of spread that can be adjusted



Ok I have to admit something. Before now the tracers didn't actually go where the bullets were hitting. Forgive me. It was good enough at the time but not good enough anymore. Even worse, they would go through surfaces that stopped the bullets. This irritated me for awhile and I was so happy to fix it.

Now the tracers actually follow the path of the bullets, and stop where the bullets stopped. This means the spread of the minigun is directly visible in your tracers.



Previously both miniguns (left and right) would aim towards a single point.

By keeping them parallel, you increase the actual area covered by their shots, and I think it just looks better too.

I also improved the look of the lasers which designate their aim, and added small laser dots to the end. This makes it clear to the player where the shots will land, if they're blocked by an object, and it responds slightly to changes in the helicopters angle.

Before

After


Another way to make something feel powerful, is to make the NPCs afraid of it!



This took an entire rewrite of the NPC AI. Which was on my list for a long time and this was reason enough to do it. More on this next time, it will probably be the topic of the next devlog.

Each NPC has sensors that it can use to make decisions about what state to be in. If they see or hear a shot near them, and don't see a current target, they will run away. This uses a common method of adding AI Stimulations or "Stims" to the world that each NPC can choose to react to.

A fun bug that exists currently: The NPCs don't differentiate between their own shots and their enemies shots. So they can essentially shoot and then startle themselves, and run away. I'm working on a fix to give them a bit more courage.

The minigun sound effect doesn't have much in the low frequencies, and it's hard to really distinctly feel when the individual rounds are being fired. I experimented with adding a small bass pop when the gun actually fires each bullet. It's subtle, but it feels a lot better.

I don't have a gif for this. ;)

This one is subtle... I wonder if you noticed it in the above gifs? The minigun has a bit of recoil that it exerts onto the helicopter when firing. Notice how in the before gif, the helicopter is totally stationary, but in the other gifs it's moving slightly backwards.

I think I will use this more for the minigun upgrades in the game. If you unlock a more powerful gun, it might have higher recoil.


happy bob ross with trees for hair is a vibe

Know someone that would like this game? Ask them to wishlist it + follow here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1710820/Cleared_Hot/

Wishlists help me a ton. And thank you all for your continued support. I've heard from a bunch of you over email and twitter and it helps a lot to know you're along for the ride!

You have probably already heard about a top secret base built in the USSR in late 1950s and known as Facility 3826. They have found many uses - domestic and professional. But thanks to the “Atomic Heart” project, robots now have decent battle abilities and battle vehicles have a place in War Thunder, of course.



We are introducing a separate lineup of secret Soviet robots created in collaboration with Atomic Heart! Here you will find the most diverse vehicles. For example, MA-9 Belyash welding robot inspired by chimpanzees which can easily climb even on vertical surfaces and this makes it a perfect scout. Designed for repair and construction work, the NA-T256 Natasha is equipped with a jetpack that allows it to launch vertically and reach speeds of up to 95 km/h. It is also armed with anti-personnel mines, a rocket launcher and Katyusha 3.0 multiple rocket launcher, making it indispensable in support. Air attack equipment such as the MTU-7 Bumblebee truck with laser system or a small-sized mobile drone LUC-1 Owl with ShKAS automatic machine guns are also widely represented in the lineup.

Thanks to the detailed documentation received from Scientific and Industrial Facility 3826, battle robotics will be embodied into War Thunder with all certainty.

Wait for it on the battlefields!

Fixed bug which would not allow the player to play the game from the beginning again

Our deep seeded tennis passion and a long labor of love went into this gargantuan update, and we're thrilled to finally share it with the Full Ace community!

The full changelog is below, where you'll find a completely reworked volley system, a tutorial for approaching the net, material AI improvements, quick save replays, and a whole lot more.

As always, we're eager to discuss and hear your feedback on the update. Please join the Full Ace Discord channel, if you haven't already, where you can meet and play other players, get info on tournaments, and chat with kschoice directly.

One last note: we're happy to announce that we fully expect to resume a more regular schedule of updates. Getting this one out the door took quite a bit longer that we were hoping due to non game development factors, but we're extremely pleased with how it turned out and are excited to get back at adding and improving Full Ace more regularly.

Thank you and happy tennis playing!

• Gameplay : Completely reworked volley system. Volleys now behave like auto-prepare whether or not auto-prepare is enabled. If you prepare manually you will still hit a volley.
  
• Gameplay : Added option to use dropshots and lobs on volley (therefore you should now use dropshot instead of slice button in order to make a proper dropshot)
  
• Gameplay : Split steps are more dynamic.
  
• Gameplay : Modified challenge view so that bounce is never hidden by net band.
  
• Gameplay : Reach leniency that allowed hitting balls that were not in contact with the racket has been reduced to more realistic range.
  
• Gameplay : Added more leniency for hitting balls that come to the character's body.
  
• Gameplay : It is not possible to hit balls at unreasonable heights any more.
  
• Gameplay : Removed possibility to load second tap before first tap ended by pressing another button simultaneously.
  
• Gameplay : Modified auto-positioning triggering so that it is more demanding for the player. You now have to be really close to the path of the incoming ball, or begin to move in the right direction for it to trigger.
  
• AI : Significant behaviour improvements and many bug fixes
  
• Debug : Replay files are even more important than before for bug report because now they can be debugged. The game also attempts to save a replay file as additional information if it crashes during a rally.
  
• Interface : Added proper count for net points and unforced errors in stats screen.
  
• Interface : Added option to quick-save replays.
  
• Interface : Added warning in main menu indicating that not all tutorial lessons are completed.
  
• Tutorial : Added 2 lessons for approaching the net (304 and 305). If you don't go through those lessons, you will miss at the net and you won't understand why.
  
• Tutorial : Added the possibility to continue any lesson indefinitely and adjusted certain lessons for that.
  
• Visuals : Some animations (other than volleys) improved.
  
• Visuals : Net assets have been reworked in several ways.
  
• Visuals : New smash spot and improved timing orb look.

Hi Kerbonauts!

Last week we sat down with Creative Director Nate Simpson for our first Ask Me Anything on Discord! We got over 600 questions, collected from Discord, Steam, and the KSP forums. Nate answered a ton of questions-the full AMA can be found here. As a reminder, we're in Early Access! Plans can change.

We've tried our best to organize the questions based on topic, happy reading! Thank you to everyone who submitted questions and tuned into the AMA. We can't wait to do this again in the future!

Has there been any piece of community feedback/content that you and the team find especially motivating?

• Anytime I hear about someone who wasn't able to get into KSP1 get into KSP2, that's incredibly motivating. Especially when it's kids. Feels great to hear kudos that someone feels we're on the right track with things, whether it be UI, soundtrack, etc. Howard, our composer, has been showered with praise upon the EA release - and it's SO deserved. When we hear nice things, it energizes us.

What is the reasoning behind not allowing Early Access players the ability to use the debug menu? Since it is a sandbox game its omission seems odd, especially for Early Access. Will it be included at some point for single player campaigns?

• So, the debug controls were really only added for internal developer purposes, and we haven't really done any QA testing - or really created any design specs for it. Adding a debug menu could change a million variables that would really make it hard to investigate bugs. I want there to be a player-focused debug menu one-day.

Now that the first patch is out, what are you mainly focusing on?

• Stability, performance, new features, in the order. Obviously, I am eager to see heat be implemented. We've shared the visuals but there's also the actual heating system. Thermal kinda feels like the final pillar we need for the structural outline of KSP2 to be complete so we can start building on top of it with the EA milestones.

Are big features like science or interstellar on the backburner until the game is better optimized, or are the big features being developed alongside bug and performance patches?

• It's more parallel. People are focused on different things at the same time.

What was your favorite thing to work on in KSP2? What was your least favorite thing to work on?

• Favorite things: probably tutorials. Tapped into my own passions as a storyteller, especially visual storytelling. Learning how we can convey complex topics with amazing animations.
  
• Least favorite: probably tutorials. We iterated like CRAZY with them - redid them multiple times. Multiple scripts, multiple animations, lots of work. We eventually had breakthroughs on each one, but it was a process.

What has been the most challenging feature to work on?

• For me: see above - tutorials.
  
• For the team: heavy technical stuff. Adapting architecture to interstellar scale, accelerating trajectories, multiplayer. These make almost everything hard to implement, but we're making progress!

Will there be more tutorials in game, such as the ones being uploaded to TikTok, etc.?

• For the in-game tutorials, we have quite a few already made. The animations are already made for 9 or 10 of them. As new features are being added to the game, tutorials will come alongside them.

How much time and research goes into deciding what kind of rocket/space plane parts get into KSP2?

• A LOT. Chris Adderley (Nertea) is an amazing researcher and has a ton of existing knowledge. We also work with subject matter experts like Dr. Uni Shumlak from the University of Washington. We hold ourselves to the standard of rooting everything in game to real life science. Even if it's not a perfect implementation, if you look it up on Wikipedia you discover our features are real. We spend a lot of time on the Atomic Rockets website as well!

What is one feature/part/idea you really wanted to implement, but would not/could not for whatever reason?

• This game is unique because we basically never say "no" to things. We often "defer" things because there's more important things to work on. Like for example, Chris and I want to add a proper airliner cockpit, but it's going to take time and effort from our team. Hopefully we'll get to it someday!

In regards to the decision to leave wobbly rockets within the game. Are there plans to make this feature more detrimental to rocket design and progression? Or is this simply an early implementation of something that'll become more elaborate and significant?

• This is a really good example of how having something in Early Access helps us iterate and develop features forward. This is definitely a hot topic, so here's my two cents: If a rocket is skinny and made of many stacked parts, it should wobble. Larger scales, no. We're working on it; it will get better.

Will there by XL-sized launch engines, and if so, are there any estimates on when they will be added?

• We have some very big engines that will arrive with the Interstellar update. People have seen the Crucible which is MASSIVE. Big Engines Coming!

Are there going to be any significant changes to the science system in KSP2, or any changes that you feel are worth talking about?

• For context, the first of the progression modes that will be coming in a roadmap update will be science mode. It will be similar to the KSP1 experience. Gaining science points, redeeming them for parts. Differences would include: We don't want people to be able to gather huge amounts of science around the KSC. We want to push people to explore and visit all the other Celestial Bodies. There will be an opt-in mission system that gives you a reward for doing a particular thing.

Will certain resources needed for colony construction be planet/biome specific?

• The diversity of resources is what's going to make exploration mode so fun. Compared to KSP1 which was very self-directed (take temperatures, etc.), when there is a unique resource somewhere that gates your access to some category of parts/features - wow it totally changes the game. It gives you something material, the interplanetary/interstellar progression will really POP once you're able to dig up a specific thing that gives you a specific ability.

What kind of size range can we expect with colonies? Will all colonies be roughly the same size, or will we be able to have small 1-2 launch research colonies along with our gigantic industrial ones? Will there be any upper size limit?

• There's no plan for an enforced upper-size limit. It'll be smaller to vehicles: it's made of parts - we want people to make it as large as they want. Obviously not all computers can handle massive builds, so there will probably be a player-dependent FPS-based size limit.

When interstellar is implemented, are the different solar systems going to be stationary or are they going to orbit something (to simulate a galaxy)?

• One of the things I learned very early in the project is that the movement of stars around a galactic center is very unintuitive compared to normal movement. Especially when you're dealing with stuff like dark matter, it's unpredictable. Our current implementation is that thye do move relative to the galactic plane, but we want other stars to be moving targets that you'll still have to get an intercept for.
  
• Short answer: yes.

Will we see many more star systems and other interstellar objects added throughout the game's map as the years go on?

• We've committed to three star systems leading up to 1.0. I'd love to add more circumstances permitting. That's not an official plan, but that's what I personally want. We always come up with cool ideas for new celestial bodies - and we want to add new bodies that create new kinds of gameplay. When we have those ideas, we definitely want to get them into the game!

How useful will orbital construction be and how awesome are the colonies?

• Completely critical to interstellar progression. You can't make an interstellar vehicle in gravity well. Someone will definitely prove me wrong about that one day.

Can we get anything in writing related to the planned structure/function of multiplayer within the game, and how you plan to work around certain speedbumps like timewarp or two-player craft docking (ie where is the processing for this done?)?

• Generally, we try to not talk much about multiplayer but let me give you something. People will have separate timelines and then there will be a reconciliation phase when the players interact with each other. That's the plan right now but I also can't speak directly to the details of this feature - future comms incoming!

Do you expect multiplayer KSP2 to overtake single-player KSP2 in terms of player count and development when it releases? In other words, will single-player KSP2 become mostly obsolete?

• There's something about single-player KSP2 that can be very meditative. I don't always feel the need to share what I'm doing with everyone. I think single-player will always have a place.

What is your favorite KSP2 mod so far?

• We are IMPRESSED by how many exist already. Selfishly, it's one from LinuxGuruGamer, someone who if you're part of the modding community you're probably already familiar with. It's a script that automatically collects relevant logs for bug reports to send our way. Definitely awesome.

Many community members across the modding scene have noticed that certain models often contain INSANE polygon counts. Will those be reviewed for optimization passes too?

• Already in progress. Some models actually need those insane polygon counts, like th IVA cockpits. Somethings unusually high polygon-count models slip through and we'll look to optimize them as our schedule allows. Patch notes will include lines such as "mesh optimization' which would basically be that.

Once the game is "complete" with everything on the roadmap implemented and debugged, is it possible development will continue with new features?

• KSP got updates for over a decade. We want to do the same thing.

Will robotics be implemented in a future update?

• Probably not before 1.0. There's a lot of work leading up to the full 1.0 release. When we get to it, we want to make sure it's fully implemented, so after 1.0...one day.

Any thoughts on adding VR support to KSP2 in the future?

• Yes, I want it badly. Conversation will happen after 1.0.

Any plans to have a solid planet that is about the size of Jool or perhaps larger?

• We do have a super-Earth in the game: Ovin. It's not as big as Jool, I think it's 60% larger than Kerbin. It has its own rings. It's big enough to make landing hard. No plans for a Jool-sized terrestial planet. Should we do it, community?

Will we have (and when) realistic plasma/smoke tail after reentering spacecraft and different colors of heated plasma because of different speeds of reentry?

• Different atmospheres probably have different colors of plasmas - different ionization attributes. Going back to that iterative development point, the first version of re-entry heating will be one color, but the spec definitely calls for multiple colors based on location and atmospheric composition.

Will atmosphere-rich celestial bodies have weather patterns sometime in the future? If so, would this weather have any physical effect on your vessel?

• We do not have short-term plans for that. We have planets with tilt, so we could implement weather and seasons. But, we have a long runway ahead of us. Never say never, but yeah if we wanted to implement these features, we'd want it to affect gameplay in some way, so we'd need to figure that out. There's also the whole 'once we implement more modding capabilities' to the game, it's totally possible something like this is added by the community.

Are there plans to have collaborations for missions and/or other scenarios in-game with IRL space agencies such as NASA, ESA, etc.?

• Yes. Yes. Yes. We did that stuff in the past, and we're so excited about the things they're doing. It really just matters what those institutions are doing. If anyone knows people there, we're waiting by our phones...

General Miscellaneous

What non-KSP game/piece of media has inspired you and the team the most?

• There's a video called "The Wanderers" by Eric Wernquist. It's a beautiful, very short video, that definitely feels like our 'north star' for what we want KSP2 to feel like. It has these beautiful-rendered scenes of humankind exploring the solar system. We watch it fairly frequently and show it to new hires.

If you read all of this (or scrolled to the bottom hehe)...snacks for you! 🍬

Hello friends! Every Friday 17:30 UTC/GMT we hold a “Let’s play together” competition. During next 24 hours everyone is welcome to try and score the best time in a preselected level. Join our Discord server and keep Discord running while playing — your results will be automatically published in the #lets-play-together channel. You need to get 5 stars to qualify.

Glittering prizes include:
1) Top 3 winners receive one random card each. Collect 18 locomotive cards and advance to next set of 6 all new cards! Complete that second set and enter a final tier of 12 rare cards! Assemble all cards from all tiers and receive a special prize. Easy!
2) Every player registered by our Discord bot has a chance to get a card. The number of cards depends on the number of participants: one additional card for every 10 train connoisseurs on the list. More players means more prizes!

Visit our Discord server (#lets-play-together channel) to learn more.

A level we are playing this week is
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2949657520

Now open your game - the link is right there in the main menu.

Good luck everyone!

• Updated description in recipe book to better suggest how to get seeds.
  
• Higher chance of getting seeds from a field if you have fewer than 2
  
• Added the ability to turn off rain, snow, sun and zoom effects
  
• Slowed down the snow and altered its visuals... to make it more magical!
  
• FIXED MULTIPLAYER... might still be buggy, as am working on a version where you don't need to wait for your friend
  
• Removed mention of multiplayer including a tutorial mode, as that should not take place
  
• Added multiplayer ghosts, so you can have a glimpse of what you're friend is doing
  
• Made To Do separate words
  
• Added the TENT craftable (Thanks to Ouroboros for the suggestion). It's a temporary shelter, that will degrade over time, so don't rely on it for long!
  
• You can now end your turn using the space bar (Requested by ProNooP)
  
• Fast Forward - If you hold down the mouse button (or now the Space bar) it will be a more reliable way of fast forwarding.

As always, keep in mind that these features are new... so likely come with a pinch of... bugs.

Thanks for the suggestions, and keep them coming!