Apr 3, 2023

The Political Process - Verlumino

The game has been updated to version 0.249.

Main Features: Redistricting.

NOTES
With any update, there is a rare chance of files getting corrupted. This can cause a black/white empty screen when starting the game. If you experience this problem, you can visit this forum post for instructions on how to fix it: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1184770/discussions/2/3085508296772338528/

If you experience any other problems, you can post a new discussion in the bug reports forum, by navigating to the community hub, clicking the Discussions tab, and clicking the Bug Reports link on the right side of the screen.

If you want to continue playing a previous version of the game, you can right click on the game in your Steam library, click properties, then click betas and select the version you want to play. (The most recent version was version 0.239).

ADDITIONS (Redistricting)
-Added redistricting to the game. This is applicable to congressional, state house, and state senate districts. Redistricting will happen automatically every 10 in-game years on week 47. (Redistricting occurs 1 year after the beginning of every decade - 2021, 2031, 2041). If the player - or the player’s protégé - is in a relevant position of power, the player will be given an opportunity to participate in the redistricting process. Redistricting can be turned off in the Advanced Options, under the Nation tab.
-Added a Redistricting Analysis – it will appear in the player’s schedule on week 49 of redistricting years. It is also available in the Politicians -> U.S. House -> Districts tab.
-Added Information about Redistricting to the Concepts Menu.
-Added an option to change districts from the Profile tab (if it is not an election year). The purpose of this is to change districts if the redistricting process made your current district unfavorable. You can move districts without losing your current position.
-Added a mechanism that adjusts approval ratings of party leadership based on gerrymandering. If a state commits gerrymandering, voter approval among independents and the opposition party will decrease (for the governor, and state house/senate majority leaders); voter approval among voters of the majority party will increase.
-Added New Advanced Options:
-Added advanced options to adjust many redistricting variables.
-Added advanced options that allow the player to change the number of congressional districts each state has.
-Added an advanced option to change which counties belong to which congressional districts. The counties in a district are used to determine that district’s demographics every 10 years during the redistricting process.
-Added advanced options to adjust redistricting laws for each state (or at the national level), including whether the state uses the state legislature or an independent commission to do redistricting.
-Added an advanced option to mandate Independent Redistricting Commissions at the national level – this will require all states to use independent commissions during the redistricting process.
-The game now creates “aggregate” state legislatures for every state. These aggregates list the number of politicians that belong to each party, but individual politicians are not created. They will be adjusted every election cycle based on relevant information, and they will be used in the redistricting process.
-Added advanced options to change the state legislature aggregates (for non-player state legislatures). These aggregates are used to calculate election results for state legislature elections (in non-player states). They are also used in the redistricting process to determine if the state legislature has the power to gerrymander districts. These aggregates can be changed at any time during the game by going to the advanced options, clicking the state house or state senate tab, and then click the “Other States” button at the top of the list of districts.

ADDITIONS (Other)
-Added an option for protégés to run for governor in any state (previously it was limited to the player’s home state). Protégés must reside in the state where they want to run for governor.
-Updated the protégé selection menu so that it now shows the current incumbent for each district and it shows if the incumbent is running for reelection (only applicable between weeks 2 – 6 during election years).
-Added the possibility for protégés to face primary challengers, if the protégé is not an incumbent. (Currently this is not applicable for school board or city council elections – so that protégés have an easier entry point into politics).
-Adjusted presidential primaries so that protégés will not withdraw before the first primary.
-County data is now saved and loaded.
-County population demographics are updated at the end of every in-game year.
-Added counties to the advanced options – you can now change variables specific to each county. In the advanced options menu, navigate to the States tab; at the top of that menu, there is a button called [State] Counties. Clicking on that will open a new menu to adjust county variables.
-Added an option to save Advanced Option Presets in the middle of a game. It is still not possible to load presets in the middle of a game.
-Added an option to save/load spouse presets.
-Added an advanced option to change the birth rate at the national, state, and city levels.
-Reduced the age penalty for city elections. Previously, anyone under the age of 35 was penalized by -5; now, anyone under the age of 22 is penalized by -2. Many players probably start as young characters, and start at the city level positions; it does not seem fair to penalize them when running for these positions when there are not any alternative positions for younger characters.
-Slightly reduced the democratic presidential incumbent turnout bonus for competitive states. For wave elections it was reduced from 0.38 to 0.3; for non-wave elections, it was reduced from 0.34 to 0.26. The expected outcome is that democratic presidential incumbents will perform worse in their reelection compared to their first election (instead of performing better). Another consequence is that democrats are less likely to win a congressional majority during democratic presidential reelection years. If you want to adjust these values, you can go to the advanced options, elections --> All States --> Turnout tab (under the section titled “Variables for Balancing Elections”).
-When the player is asked to fill a vacancy, the game now generates at least one random character, so that the player is not forced to select a current politician (or protégé) if they do not want to.
-Added a “Longest Serving” section to the Politician Summary page (similar to Oldest and Youngest Politicians).
-Adjusted initial governor calculations so that initial governors are more realistic. The new calculations are more consistent with how governors are elected throughout the game.
-Added a close (X) button to the options menu, so it is no longer necessary to scroll to the bottom to exit the menu.
-Added an advanced option to update city, state, and national populations in the middle of a game. Previously this was not allowed because it caused problems with economic variables, but those problems have been addressed in this update. A warning has been added to these advanced options to indicate that they are “experimental”. Once they have had sufficient testing, without any problems, that warning can be removed.

FIXES
-Fixed an issue where incumbent protégés would not be displayed as incumbents during elections.
-Likely fixed an issue where protégés would continue to run for reelection as a governor even if they were told to run in a different election (or no election at all).
-Fixed an issue where politicians would not be replaced as committee chairs/ranking-members if they vacated their position for any reason. This created a situation where committee chairs/ranking-members could become empty variables, which could prevent the game from saving.
-Fixed an issue where party leadership positions would not be replaced if the player appointed a party leader to a different position as part of filling a vacancy. This could cause issues where the game would not progress to the next turn (if the game was trying to access a party leadership variable that no longer existed).
-Fixed an issue where initial senate elections would not calculate correctly after loading an advanced option preset. The game was using default state demographics to calculate initial senators, instead of using state demographics saved in the advanced option preset.
-Fixed an issue where special elections would not run if the same candidate had been used to fill more than one vacancy within the same year. The solution was to prevent candidates from being selected for another position if they had already been assigned to a special election.
-Fixed an issue with the presidential primary election night where it would show the incorrect vote percentage when hovering over the national map.
-Fixed an issue where new candidates in governor elections had their voter enthusiasm calculated based on the policy positions of voters in the player’s home state, rather than in the home state of the candidate.
-Fixed an issue where several variables could become NaN if the poverty rate was 0%.
-Likely fixed an issue where the poverty rate could become 0% when updating advanced options in the middle of a game. This could have caused issues where variables became NaN.
-Fixed an issue where poverty and per capita income at the state level were calculated incorrectly (or rather were calculated based on incorrect variable values).
-Likely fixed an issue where a politician would not leave their current office if they won a special election.
-Fixed an issue where national name recognition would not update correctly – under certain circumstances – while using the easy or very easy election difficulties during presidential elections.
-Likely fixed an issue where the game would create a death event for the player’s character (as a former president) even if the player was still playing as the character.
-Likely fixed an issue with advanced options where Alaska counties would not load correctly when loading advanced option presets.
-Fixed an issue where certain schedule events would disappear if the player resigned from office, even if it was not appropriate for them to disappear. This could have caused problems. For example, if the player’s protégé was governor, and the player resigned as a senator, a schedule event would be created where the protégé would ask the player who should fill the senate vacancy. But, this event would be deleted before the player had a chance to complete the event. This would cause a situation where the player’s character is not replaced as senator.
-Fixed an issue where a candidate’s fiscal and social ideology would not be updated after their policies had been updated during the conditional endorsement process. This could create situations where a candidate could have very liberal social policies, but still be labeled as socially conservative.
-Fixed an issue where state cabinet members would not update when moving to a new state; the game would have continued using cabinet members from the previous state. (It is unclear what will happen to protégés who are state cabinet members when the player moves states.)
-Fixed an issue where Avery County, NC did not belong to any congressional districts. It has been added to NC-5. Any game saved prior to version 0.241 will automatically have Avery County placed into NC-5 when loading.
-Fixed an issue where Massachusetts state senate district 30 was not saved.
-Likely fixed an issue where candidates would not be updated correctly when customizing elections. This was specific to player elections (elections involving the player) that were customized between week 6 and 19. The candidate customized would not be the candidate used in the primary; instead the initial (un-customized) candidate would have been used.
-May have fixed an issue where governors would run for president and senate at the same time, creating the possibility of duplicate politicians. This could have also created an issue where a president would run for a third presidential term if they were duplicated as a senator.
-Likely fixed an issue where state (and national) populations would significantly increase under specific conditions (the result of a significant increase to the Medicaid eligibility rate). The increase to population would have come exclusively from senior citizens.

Apr 3, 2023

Tunche: Enhanced Edition is here!

Tunche - SushiRice

Hello everyone!

This is Jorge, one of the co-directors of Tunche with a new update after a very long time without much communication. First of all, I want to apologize for not being able to send updates more often or answer many of the questions that backers and players have left in places such as YouTube videos, Steam community threads or the Kickstarter campaign page, just to name a few.

However, this time I come to you on behalf of all our team bearing some very important news as a new update should have hit PC stores by now and… This is the big one.

Affectionately referred to as the “Enhanced Edition Update”, this is not a new game that you have to buy again or anything like those “Super” or “Complete” editions that you can see out there.

I can’t address this enough: This one arrives completely for free, and every single player that owns any version of Tunche on PC can connect to the Internet and update their games to gain access to the update from today (April 3rd) and onwards.

What does this update include? I’m glad you asked. Here’s the rundown:

The Dark Heroes

Remember all those months (actually years) ago during our Kickstarter campaign that our dear backers managed to reach some extra goals. One of them included the creation of a special set of bosses known as the “Dark Heroes” and you’ll finally get to meet them with this update.

Evil versions of Rumi, Qaru, Nayra and Pancho wait for you in the Jungle and as soon as you meet the requirements to face any of them, you’ll be able to find them at the end of any level by going through a new special portal placed right next to the one for the regular boss.

I must warn you though, the Dark Heroes are no pushovers and will be harder to defeat than any other enemy in the game, so make sure you are well equipped with your best Spiritual Cores and unlock as many skills as you can before heading into these duels.

New Endings (for each character)

This is something we have been wanting to add to the game for a while. In the original launch, there was only a single ending sequence when you managed to beat the final boss. This time, things have changed a bit and while you still have the classic ending, if you manage to collect all 4 story comics for a character and beat their deadly Dark Hero version, you will get to see an extra epilogue comic sequence, exclusively for that character, once you defeat the final boss.

There is one different epilogue for each one of our heroes, so you can play and find out what happens with each one of them after the adventure ends.

Also, while Hat Kid does not have a Dark Hero version of herself, you can just collect all 4 of her story comics and defeat the final boss to see her special, and quite moving, ending.

Extra Stuff

While the previous two are the biggest parts of the update, that’s not all. We have changed the balance of the game so that you can go through some of the longest levels a bit faster, including the first one. So if you just hated dying right before the final boss and having to start from the beginning again, now you will be able to go through the first levels a lot faster and get back right to where you were. But if you love a challenge, don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you’ll be able to breeze through the game as all enemy types and enemies will still be there waiting for you, so if you die, don’t forget to get stronger at the starting camp before trying again.
______________

Just some final words before leaving so you can go play Tunche.

On behalf of all of Tunche’s development team, I want to thank you all for playing the game and I hope you really enjoy this new “Enhanced Edition” free update. We put a lot of effort and heart into the new bosses and also a lot of caring into the new endings.

This is our big goodbye to this beautiful world we created and launched back in November 2021. The development of Tunche has been long and full of hardships, including a global pandemic that changed the way we worked at LEAP Game Studios.

However, we never forgot about the promise we made to those backers that made this game possible and while some promises still need to be fulfilled (like the imminent arrival of the long delayed physical rewards for some backers) this new update is the last piece of content that will go into the game. While we will monitor it in case we need to fix any bugs that might have escaped through our fingers, this is Tunche’s Final Form.

Our designers, artists, programmers, composers and everyone else behind this title are now moving onto new projects and I’m sure you will be hearing about them very soon. But for now, this is goodbye to the Amazonian Jungle, to Rumi, Nayra, Qaru, Pancho, our little guest Hat Kid and all the other characters that have made this game so special.

Once again, to those that helped us launch Tunche and everyone who has spent some of their valuable time playing it, thank you very much and I hope to see you again in the future, in another adventure with new heroes, enemies and a lot of fun.

Best,
Jorge
Tunche’s Co-director

Apr 3, 2023

Deceive Inc. Hotfix 1.05.02 Is Now Live!

Deceive Inc. - Yoshiro

Welcome Agents, we are back with a second hotfix to address some HOT issues raised by the community since our launch last week. Let’s dive into it!

General Fixes
The “Scroll wheel” bug
The infamous “scroll wheel” bug would cycle through your weapons and gadget non stop when swapping too quickly. This annoying terror has been the bane of agents on the field and we are happy to report that this hotfix comes to the rescue.

This has been one of our highest priorities since this bug has been very detrimental to the experience and we thank you for your patience around this issue!

Matchmaking region preference setting
We’ve received a lot of demand for more control over the matchmaking experience. We added customizable preferences that will allow you to choose if matchmaking should prioritize quick matching or the lowest latency possible.

You can find the following options under General Settings:

Best Latency Only - Will only attempt to place you in the lowest latency servers to you
Local Region (Default) - Will attempt to place you in servers local to your region (Example: North American servers)
World Wide - Will get you into the game the quickest by continuing to expand search region until it finds a match (most similar to current behavior)

Keep in mind that these settings can affect your matchmaking time.

Modifications to Animated Portrait default setting
The 3D portrait showcasing your character live has been identified as a very resource intensive setting on many configurations. With this build, we are making the static version the default setting with some polish to the overall look. This will also benefit console performance and should result in a smoother experience.

Fix to invalid skins in loot briefcases
We’ve received reports of items in loot briefcases that were invalid leading to lost rewards. We tracked down multiple of these items and removed them from the loot pool to prevent this from happening again.

Fixed Silver Reef Shortcut
The shortcut in terminal room E in Silver Reef has been non-functional since launch. We’ve fixed it in this patch, giving you a new exit from the room for some cheeky flanks.

Fix for invincible guards
Some issues could lead to guards becoming invincible leading to a lot of frustrations. This hotfix adds failsafes to prevent this issue from occurring.

Agent Balance Tweaks
We’ve been looking at feedback, player chatter and our internal stats to see the overall agent performance and perception. While we are not pushing major changes to the balance with this update, we are tweaking three agents in accordance with our internal stats.

Cavalière
Cavalière has a very high pick rate currently and has been the source of frustration for a lot of players. While having two pistols will always be incredibly cool, making her a popular choice, her kit is a bit too oppressive as it is currently. We are starting with some weapon changes and we are assessing other tweaks to her kit as we keep looking at the analytics in the coming days.

Weapons:
Some of Cavalière’s weapons have been too permissive to multiple misses leading to easy multi kills with very few downtime. To this end, we are shortening the magazine of some of her weapons and upping her reload time a bit overall, giving less leeway to be sloppy in a fight.

Base Weapon: Reduced ammo in magazine from 18 to 14. Reload time increased from 1.8 seconds to 2 seconds. Looted ammo adjusted in accordance with new magsize

Weapon mod 1: Reduced ammo in magazine from 20 to 16.Reload time increased from 1.8 seconds to 2 seconds. Looted ammo adjusted in accordance with new magsize

Weapon mod 2: Reload time increased from 1.8 seconds to 2 seconds.

Squire
According to our analytics, Squire has been doing extremely well. While we love having our most newcomer friendly character doing great, we feel his base weapon is a bit overperforming in its current form. As such we are making his base weapon a BIT less permissive on how much damage it can deal without reloading.

Base Weapon: Reduced ammo in magazine from 12 to 10 bullets. Adjusting ammo pickup amounts to fit with this new number.

Hans
On the other end of the spectrum, Hans has been the outlier in terms of low performance. While once again we are not taking huge leaps in a hotfix, we are giving him a bit more effective range on all his weapons in hipfire to make him more consistent in all short range engagements. We’ll keep watching performance to assess future tweaks.

Weapons:

Tweaked damage falloff on all three weapons hipfire.
Shotgun pellets will keep full damage up to 10 meters now instead of 5.
The damage falloff curve for hans hipfire will be less abrupt, allowing pellets to keep more damage from afar.
Minimum damage of a pellet will be 60% instead of 50% at the farthest range to keep more consistency on time to kill.

Thank you Agents for your continued feedback and reports! As a reminder, we are expecting the first big content update and the start of the catalog system later this month with Misery Empire - more details on the roadmap or check out this community made 7 minute recap of the Roadmap and Community Q&A Stream!