Apr 14, 2023

1.0.9 Lowering Difficulties, Toggleable Map settings & lots more! QoL update #3

Lone Fungus - BASTI

I've read what the community has to say about the current room/map system Lone Fungus has and it seems the community is quite split on how it should be. So my solution was to make the map system toggleable on the Explorer, Normal and Custom difficulties. That means those who like that the map updates at Shrines can play like they used to and those who want instant map updating on Normal can turn it on!

In hindsight I wish I had put the toggle inside of the settings menu, I'll probably move it there at some point.

With this also comes tons of other smaller and bigger changes, the bigger change is that you can copy your savefiles (except Nightmare saves) and also lower the difficulty of chosen savefiles!

I've tested the feature extensively and it should be without issues but since it's a new feature either backup your saves manually in the games folder or use the new copy-save feature and lower the difficulty of your copy if that's what you are planning on doing. Just to be on the safe side.

Thanks everyone for giving feedback and helping me make this game better, more to come :)!

Changelog:
- Added so you can lower the difficulty of your current save files
- Added so you can copy saves within the game
- Added a difficulty setting: Toggleable Map (It'll be ON for Normal, Explorer and Custom)
- You can place pins while in the teleportation view of map
- Turned the left Shrine at the surface to a Gold-Shrine
- Made it so teleporting to a new shrine sets that to your last used Teleportation Wand location
- Fixed Variable Dash setting now saving properly in the in-game menu
- Fixed being able to view the map in Astral Nexus
- Possibly fixed a weird bug where you could die when reaching the transition to the surface
- Improved the collision on the log breaking below the first gold shrine
- Fixed the Mossy Ruins gates not telling you are missing an upgrade
- Fixed some Ice collision in some of the Frozen Depths Astral Gates
- Fixed the Astral Fragment disappearing from UI in the Astral Gates
- Fixed the Conjure Mushmover UI symbol showing when you don't have one
- The map will update after using the Teleportation Wand
- Fixed a bug with the flowers in Mossy Ruins when pausing at the right moment
- Made it so you can't land on the spikes and die under Screw Sentinel boss
- Fixed Greeter Statues name saying Grand Librarian in one box
- Fixed a bug where you could softlock yourself by using the Teleportation Wand quickly after Teleporting and Saving
- Fixed the combo slash being buggy

Apr 14, 2023

Fabledom Screenshot contest 🐷

Fabledom - Terry_Dear Villagers (Com Dev)

Dear princesses and princes, 🤴 👸

Create an amazing screenshot of your realm and submit it to the Fabledom Community Hub.

Instructions :

1. Once you have finished building your kingdom, press F12 to take a screenshot.
2. Shift+Tab and Upload your screenshot - remember to set it as public!
3. Add a caption using the tag #FABscreen(The name of your kingdom)!
4. Describe your kingdom with 1-2 sentences ^^

Theme: A Flourishing Kingdom 💐

You have two weeks until 30 April l to submit the picture of your realm! 🏰

After that date, the top 3 community-voted winners will be rewarded with 600 Steam Points! (Next month there might be the delivery of piggy ... let's see)

So, please read the terms and let's get started!

Terms:
• You must be the creator of your own kingdom! 🤴
• You must stick to the theme! You are allowed to submit your screenshot in Standard / Creative mode. It totally depends on you.
• No more editing on the screenshots ^^. We want original images. 📷
• Better include the piggy in your screenshot. 🐷

Results announced on 1 May ^^

Rewards will be delivered to the princess/princess after the results are announced ^^.

Come and chat with us on Discord!

With love,

Apr 14, 2023

Luna Abyss at GDC - Round Up

Luna Abyss - mousewastaken on twitch

Now that the excitement of GDC is over & the press articles about Luna Abyss have started coming out we wanted to drop an update with some of the cool things we got to take part in!

During GDC

The MIX

We were lucky enough to take part in The MIX's online show on Friday the 17th of March where we shared a world building showcase.

We also got to take part in their in-person showcase on Monday the 20th March where media & content creators could come & play the game!

Kinda Funny Games Showcase

We were very excited to take part in our first live-stream showcasing Luna Abyss with the team at Kinda Funny. They were wonderful & we had such a great time doing it. You can watch it here!

GDC Expo

Alongside The MIX on the Monday, this was our first time ever having a demo that people could come by & play Luna Abyss. We definitely have to give a massive shout-out to Epic Games & Unreal Engine for having us at their booth! Showcasing at the Expo was incredible.

We also got to see our trailer on the big screen at the booth & watch the talks being held by the Unreal team about UE5 features, tech, & of course the Unreal Editor for Fortnite!

After GDC

These are just some of the articles shared about Luna Abyss since GDC.

IGN Showcase

IGN had a hands-on preview of Luna Abyss in the run up to GDC & this is what they had to say. You can read the full article here!

Articles & Videos Featuring Luna Abyss

Apr 14, 2023

Balance changes and first fixes - post-release update is here!

Flooded - Kajtii

Gamers!

These past few days have been absolutely crazy! But now the dust has settled and I have the first update for you.

Before I tell you more about the changes, I want to thank all of you for your support, feedback, reviews (especially those on Steam - they mean the world to me) and just for playing Flooded. I am so happy to see that the reception has been positive. It is incredibly helpful in shaping the future of the game.

Update

Now moving on to the update. The most important change involves balancing. Our goal was to make the game challenging. The rising water is supposed to create pressure, so that players need to act fast. However, we can now see that not everyone is enjoying this as much as we do. Because of that I have extended the time for the flood meter to fill and I have reduced the impact of rain on the flood meter (on all difficulty levels). I’m hoping this will make the experience more enjoyable.

I have also added some quality-of-life features: the ability to skip splash screens when launching the game, the possibility to demolish Embankment and Defensive Dam, North Ocean now has 1 new landmark type decoration.

Keep an eye out for further updates and in the meantime, here’s a full changelog:

New features:
- Now you can skip splash screens with logos by pressing Space, Enter, Escape or LMB
- Embankment and Defensive Dam can be now demolished in destroying mode
- 1 new landmark-type decoration on North Ocean

Balance changes:
- Time till each flood is now a bit longer in all difficulty modes
- Rain global effect has now less significant effect on flood meter speed

Bugs fixed:
- Fixed small white dot appearing close to Lead Open-Pit Mines
- Now 'Reinforcement' technology affects also already built buildings
- Fixed Water Pump visual glitch in upgrading mode while using flattened view
- Water Filters are now being flattened in flattened view, as all other objects
- Now idle miners number can't be negative (but there may be still some other issues releated to miners)
- Now Ore deposit underground can't be put in 'hidden' state by obstacles on the surface

Other changes:
- Updated credits

HOTFIX 1.0.4.1

New features:
- Added a notification when there are not enough Miners
- Added a notification when not enough Water is produced
- Added Tutorial in the 2nd level reminding about mining system rules

If you encounter any bug, don't forget to let us know about it. Have fun!

See ya,
Tymek

Follow Flooded:
📍 Facebook
📍 Twitter
📍 IndieDB

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1795470/Flooded/

Apr 14, 2023

Friday Blog 230 - Controller Support and Better Building

Colony Survival - Pipliznl

In the past month, Zun has put a lot of effort into adding proper controller support to Colony Survival. For a longer time, it has been possible to access basic gameplay functionality with the Steam Controller or the Steam Deck, but it wasn’t up to standard. And playing the game with a regular Xbox/Playstation/Switch controller was pretty much impossible.

So we’ve been working to improve that situation. Rebinding jumping from space to “A” on your controller, or moving around from WASD to a thumbstick, is not that complicated. What is complicated, is replacing the mouse in the UI.

With a mouse, you just move the cursor to whatever place you need it to be and click to select it in one step. With a controller, you’ve got one button selected, and then you move that selection to another button right next to it. If there’s 10 buttons between the selected button and the intended button, you’ll need to repeat that 10 times.

Connections between buttons in the UI editor

Our interface wasn’t designed with that in mind. In some places, you have to move through dozens of other buttons to get where you want to be. For example, moving your selection through all of your savegames to get to the “play” button. That’s not very practical.

In some cases, Zun improved this situation by refactoring the layout of the UI into a more controller-friendly design. In other cases, this situation can be improved by adding button shortcuts. Instead of having to press the “Play” button in the UI, it could be enough to select a savegame and press for example “X” on the controller.

We’ll have to make those shortcuts visible in the UI, otherwise people don’t know they exist. That means we need support to display all the buttons on most controllers. And the ability to rebind all these buttons in the controls settings menu. By default, Unity doesn’t properly support that, but we’ve found a very useful asset that has helped us integrate all of that.

Good controller support is now roughly 70% finished and will be publicly released in the next update.

Better Building

One of the unexpected results of the survey was a majority preference for us to focus on better building instead of better combat. So I’ve done a lot of investigating and experimenting to see how we could integrate that into the game.

We’ve looked at “building” from a bunch of angles. Better automated construction workers. Blueprints that allow you to copy and paste designs. New requirements for bed and jobs, to prevent massive caves filled with endless rows of beds and jobblocks, devoid of all light and privacy.

Finding the perfect solution has been difficult though. Take those extra requirements for beds and jobs. If they’re simple, players will find them easy to ‘minmax’, and the new solution will be a repetitive chore as well. If they’re very complex, it becomes a completely different game with much more complicated colonists. Let us know if you’re interested in that!

We’re converging at a different solution: allowing players to build more beautiful colonies. How do we make that possible? How do we encourage that? I have to admit, this is not one of my strengths. I find it hard to build truly beautiful things, both in Colony Survival and in other games.

These are complex questions. It involves the very nature of beauty, in a way that transcends current fashion and localised preferences, and asks us to translate that to the constraints of our voxel game.

Wernigerode, Germany

Beauty in architecture is a subject I’ve long been interested in. Scott Alexander wrote a fascinating article about it that raises difficult questions. Last year, before the survey, I had already starting delving into the works of Christopher Alexander (not related to Scott), which strives to provide an answer to those questions.

Christopher Alexander writes a lot about dealing with constraints. Buildings face a lot of them. Take for example a home. It has to provide a place to cook, a place to sleep, a place to face the public world and meet strangers, a more intimate place to relax, a proper transition to the garden. It has to let in light without losing too much warmth. It has to deal with rain, with snow, with gravity.

Dealing with all these challenges properly in a consistent style while using natural materials seems to result in rather cosy places that humans like. But… our colonists are very simple. You don’t have to deal with rainwater, rotting wood, or gravity. Which results in the endless factory-caves being optimal.

So there doesn’t seem to be a perfect solution that automatically helps players build the beautiful towns of the past. But we’re working on the next best solution: give players more tools to achieve a semblance of that look, if they choose to do so.

Currently, players can pretty much only use 1x1x1 cubes. Build a wall of them and each block is identical to the next one. We want to add more detailed meshes that are more interactive. Think of pillars which automatically add a decorative top and bottom. Think of fences which connect to each other. Think of doors and window frames.

An experiment with pillars

These automatic connections between meshes are perhaps a good stepping stone towards more complicated mechanics and infrastructure in future updates: think of pipelines and electric grids.

To prevent red stone pillar / green stone pillar / blue wooden pillar / white wooden pillar from cluttering your stockpile, we’re considering a “paint feature”. Equip the red-paint-item to paint pillars/doors/fences red, and certain blocks as well.

Let us know how you feel about this! Which detailed decorations would you like to have? What features do you need to make more beautiful colonies? How would you feel about more complex colonists with more realistic needs - perhaps in a totally separate mode?

Bedankt voor het lezen :D

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