Greetings Warlords!

There have been some dissonant noises and some violations of the game's rules in the game recently. Some players have used hack on the battlefield. Some have used farm bot to level up quickly, and some have spread inappropriate words in the game. It all affects the environment of our entire Conqueror's Blade community.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/835570/view/2996562204135651693

We want all generals can enjoy the pure joy that the combat brings and will have the best gaming experience without disturbed by any violation.

Therefore, we'd like to take this chance to remind you all: we have recently noticed a big increase in accounts being flagged for using hacks, as well as websites selling accounts and phishing software. Do not try to use any of these simply due to curiosity, as doing so may lead to financial losses, and is highly likely to compromise your account's security. Any usage of cheating software will lead to your account being banned.

The following is the latest name list of violators and their punishments:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_21GMV1NCaqmJLCjDk_yUrCVVE6AL105/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=103175263634823076303&rtpof=true&sd=true

We will continue to monitor the gaming status of the above players, and if the same violations occur again, they will be subject to more severe penalties.

In order to create a healthy environment for the community, and better everyone's gaming experience, the Conqueror's Blade Operations Team will be unwavering in our fight against hack or farm bot. We won't let slide any uncivilized language in any channel. Warlords are welcome to report any of the above game violations to us. As long as we work together, we can surely create a friendly and stable gaming environment. Thanks for your support of the Conqueror's Blade.

Meanwhile, some issues or exceptions in game might be caused by bugs or an unstable network. If you are uncertain if someone is cheating, you can send us a message to our report e-mail. Once we've verified the situation, we'll deal with them appropriately, and punish them severely should they be using hacks.

Support

If you have any questions about the results of our process or need to make a complaint, please also contact us at the above email address.

Conqueror's Blade Operations Team

It’s the end of another month, which means it’s time to put the spotlight on another amazing fan in the DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR’S CUT community. Today, we’re celebrating the talents of Ari (VrPhotoGamess) a virtual photographer who has impressed us across social media since day one with her incredible in-game captures.

We hope this interview with Ari inspires more of you to head back into DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR’S CUT and experiment with the photo mode tools offered in-game.

We can’t wait to see your shots!






Hi Ari! Thank you for taking the time to chat with us for as part of our latest #DSPorterSpotlight spotlight! We absolutely love your DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR’S CUT photo mode shots. They are absolutely incredible. Can you tell us a bit more about yourself and what makes you a DEATH STRANDING fan?

Hi everyone! Thanks for letting me participate in this. I’m Ari, a virtual photographer and writer from Italy. I’ve always been a big fan of Hideo Kojima and always admired his work. When I found out he was developing a new game, I was immensely happy to see him back in action, but also curious to see what DEATH STRANDING was about. I really love DEATH STRANDING, mostly because of the wonderful actors in the game. My favorite being Mads Mikkelsen.



What was it about DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR’S CUT that appealed to you as a virtual photographer?

THE WORLD - The first thing that attracted me to DEATH STRANDING was the world. It looks very simple but in the simplicity there are some truly breathtaking passages that I love to photograph. Even in parts of the game that are darker, I also liked to photograph it as they represented what certain characters have been through.

THE MOUNTAINS - Ever since I was little, I loved mountains and in DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR’S CUT, there are so many of them, each one unique and beautiful in its own way.

THE CHARACTERS - I really like to capture the emotions of Sam’s face and also the emotions of the other characters.



Can you talk us through the process of composing and capturing that perfect shot? Do you have any top tips you’d like to share?

My process for each photo is very simple. The most important thing I do before taking a photo is look at the composition, location and light. I have to admit, it takes me a long time to even take a simple shot of a landscape or portrait because I want it to be good, to be exactly how I depicted the idea in my mind.

Of course, for some photos it only takes me one attempt and I like the first shot, for others it takes more attempts. But I don’t give up until it turns out the way I want.

One very important piece of advice I want to give is if you try to take landscape shots and you also want to show the character too, try and shoot from above! Many times we sacrifice the landscape in front of us, showing only a small part of it by positioning the camera straight on, but if you do it from above, you will see that the perspective will change completely.



Which areas of the in-game world do you recommend virtual photographers go explore when they play DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR’S CUT?

What a good question! Honestly, I would say all areas because there isn’t a bad one! My absolute favourite areas are Edge Knot City and Mountain Knot City. Both are my favourites because on one hand, we have snow-capped mountains and a crazy few of the whole world of DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR’S CUT. On the other hand, we have the ruins of the modern world that existed before the Death Stranding disaster. Even with the destroyed structures, there is still beauty to be captured.





Do you have any advice for new Porters who might be about to play DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR’S CUT for the first time?

My biggest piece of advice is to always try new things! DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR’S CUT is a completely different game, with very different mechanics and gameplay to all the other games I’ve seen and played. I fell in love with it instantly. This game has a great sense of adventure, the story is honestly one of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever experienced. I could talk for hours about the beauty of the story and that of every single character.

You won’t regret playing DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR’S CUT, believe me!

Thank you Ari for taking the time to chat with us. Keep on keeping on!



https://store.steampowered.com/app/1850570/DEATH_STRANDING_DIRECTORS_CUT/

日頃より「Tree of Savior」をご愛顧いただきありがとうございます。
「Tree of Savior」運営チームです。

本日18:50頃、以下の不具合を修正するクライアントパッチを実施いたしました。


【対応内容】
・チャレンジモードの一般モンスターの体力が正常ではない現象を修正
・ヘアコスチューム「デュアルカラーボートハット」の位置が不自然な現象を修正
・レティーシャのシークレットキューブや女神の祝福を購入した際、POPOポイントが増加しない現象を修正
▶支給されなかった分のPOPOポイントの補填は、後日対応を予定しております。
・クリオマンサーの「サブゼロシールド」スキルが、盾を着用した時のみ使用できていた現象を修正


修正内容はゲームを再起動することで反映されます。
啓示者の皆様にはお手数おかけいたしますが、一度ゲームの再起動をお願い致します。

今後とも「Tree of Savior」をよろしくお願いいたします。

「Tree of Savior」運営チーム

Greetings, Pilots.
We have an important announcement from your Community Manager - Marcus a.k.a Chairborne.

Join the first 24h Rush-Event.

The very first Rush-Event will be on this Friday starting at 7am CET/ 2pm CEST at 28.04.2023 with a duration of 24h.

Everyone is invited to try out this new event system and give us valuable feedback on how to improve this system.

On Rush-Events all players start with equal conditions on a fresh save file but gain a +100% light fragment drop rate from enemies and world objects.



How Rush-Events work
Whenever there is a planed Rush-Event it will show up in the main menu of the game with a countdown until the eventstart. Rush-Events are synced for all players around to world to our server time. Once the coutdown runs out you will be able to register and log into the event. It's important to note that Rush-Events will coexist next to our seasons and the offline save files. You can at any time switch between the Rush-Event, the current season or the offline save file from the save file manager on the top right in the main menu.

During the event
When you start playing the RushEvent you will notice a new timer on the right of the screen below your minimap. This timer always displays the remaining time within the Rush-Event. When this timer hits the last 10 minutes an additional highlight a sound effect and information is displayed to remind players to get to town on time or get defeated before the time runs out so that the score is updated.

We wish everyone a lot of fun with this new Event Type! You are looking for fellow players to talk/ share your build ideas or discuss strategies feel free to join our official discord at: https://discord.com/invite/GNEBkQDyUb

This new update adds the possibility to move around the Valley of Aurk on mounts. However, obtaining them will not be easy, as you will have to hunt down three very dangerous legendary beasts that are hiding somewhere in the Valley of Aurk.

New tasks with valuable rewards for your tribe have also been added, along with a better overview of the tasks you can perform.

Here are the new improvements and features:

Your tribe can now have mounts! To obtain them, you will need to hunt down three legendary animals that pose a great challenge!
The three legendary animals are:

• Malmut, the lord of mammoths that lives in the northern mountains of the Valley of Aurk.
  
• Baluk, a stealthy saber-toothed tiger that stalks its prey.
  
• Nockros, a terrible beast that inhabits the swamps of the Valley of Aurk. Its tusks are as large as a spear.

The presentation of the tasks that can be performed during the game has been improved.
New tasks have also been added, find objects and relics, hunt down animals, brew powerful potions, and much more!

• Great game performance optimization
  
• Improved collisions
  
• Improved bow controls
  
• Improved AI in assaults
  
• Improved animal AI
  
• Now you can heal injured animals.
  
• Improved joystick controls
  
• Correction of a lot of errors.

Once again thanks for all the constructive feedback we've had so far! Following this we have made some quality of life changes for the UI in terms of joining public servers and inviting friends.

We are looking into fixing other issues as well as planning some larger updates so stay tuned!

Full list of changes below.

• Ping is now shown on servers in the server browser
  
• Ping is now shown in game both in the bottom right corner for each player and in the pause menu next to each players name plate
  
• Accepting invites from steam without having the game open will now correctly join you to that game once you have entered your birds name
  
• You can now access steams invite menu via the green pause menu button "+ Friends" next to the Players section.

안녕하세요, 트리 오브 세이비어입니다.

4월 28일(금) 오후 6시 50분, 게임 수정을 위한 클라이언트 패치가 진행되었습니다.
클라이언트 패치 이전에 게임을 플레이하고 계셨던 구원자님께서는 게임을 재실행하시어 수정된 버전으로 플레이해 주시길 바랍니다.


[h5]【수정 내용】[/h5]

• 챌린지 모드의 일반 몬스터 체력이 비정상적인 현상
  
• 듀얼컬러 보터(헤어 코스튬) 아이템의 위치가 어색한 현상
  
• 서브제로 실드(크리오맨서) 스킬을 방패를 착용해야만 사용 가능한 현상
  
• 레티샤나 여신의 축복 구매 시, 포포샵 포인트가 지급되지 않은 현상
  - 지급되지 않은 포포샵 포인트는 추후에 지급해 드릴 예정입니다.

감사합니다.

- Modding : you can now identify with your Steam account ; note : if you play with both the Mana Games version & the Steam version, identify with your email on both versions so you'll keep your installed Mods
- Modding : you can now specify that your Mod is meant to be applied after another Mod ; for more info, read the "4) Flag your Mod as dependent of another Mod" section here => topic60-34687.php

- Animation : the service animation could be wrongly resync'ed when exiting the replay
- Modding : the game couldn't see more than 1 Mod installed from the Mod Management menu
- Modding : the game couldn't load the saved Training Club players within a Mod
- Modding : the game couldn't load the Profile's _Mod.ini files
- Menu : the mouse cursor could disappear when coming back from the Mod Management menu
- World Tour : fixed a crash when watching a CPU Player's Tournament Titles screen at the end or the start of a year

The month of April has flown by too quickly! But that also means that our monthly devlog is here. We've been making quite a few upgrades and we are getting closer and closer to the early access release in May. It's definitely a bit scary, but we are excited to get past the release and work on pushing updates without thinking about worrying about deadlines. Enough about that, let's look at April's development.

We are getting closer and closer to the early access release, and I’ve finished tweaking the character’s clothes so that they are ready for implementation into the game. We first only had the feminine body type, but we recently got the masculine body type done. Since both of our current body types need clothes, I fitted the feminine-shaped clothes to the masculine body. This way, all clothes fit all current body types and we can blend between them.

Blending between body types in the game is something we are striving for, and this is a small step in the right direction. We want to let anyone wear whatever clothes they’d like, no matter which body type or size they choose. Further down in Marius' part of the devlog, you can see the blend between the characters and clothes.



The greying gene has also had more work this month. I focused on adding greying to all of the manes we currently have. It will most likely not be available right at the release of the early access but will be added with a later update. That’s when I’ll be working on hyperpigmentation as well. Right now, the horses do not have any hyperpigmentation when greying, so it is not very accurate, especially on red horses. But the manes and tails are ready for greying and I can’t wait until we get it into the engine and shader.

Currently, we have the two greying processes that are already in the current playtest. As you might have seen in the last devlog, I updated these textures. The updated texture won’t be in the early access release from day one as I still have some tweaking to do. I want to make sure it’s up to standard and the transition between the different stages is smooth. So the texture will most likely be updated when we add greying to the hair.



Moving on to what I’ve spent the most time working on this month, horse markings. I’ve been mainly working on adding more tobiano patterns and face markings. As some of our community members noticed on one of the tobiano patterns, we use real horses as references for our markings. It’s incredibly important for me that the markings and other gene textures look and feel realistic. Therefore, I use references for all of the markings I make. I do of course tweak them a little bit so that they are not exact replicas. If I made these markings from my own head, we would definitely have some weird-looking markings.



In the current Astride playtest, we have 14 full-face markings, 14 upper-face markings, and 11 lower-face markings. As I am writing this, we have 40 full-face markings, 21 upper-face markings, and 20 lower-face markings. That’s a big step up and just from upper and lower face markings, you can make over 400 different combinations. With time, there will of course come more variations, but I absolutely feel like everyone should be able to find at least one combination of markings they like.

Some of the new face markings that are added are also designs sent in by our Kickstarter supporters! I’ve shared these markings with the supporters who sent them in, and so far, I’ve received a lot of positive feedback on them. I’m so happy to have our community be a part of the game in this way, and some of the designs are really beautiful and unique!




April has been quite a busy month. Not only have I been working hard on the Kickstarter reward art, but I’ve also been occupied with paperwork for both Østnorsk Filmsenter and Norsk Filminstitutt since both of them have been so kind and granted us funding for further development of Astride. I am so thankful to them for believing in us and Astride.

Almost all my latest WIP have been snippets of the progress of the Kickstarter art. It’s been a big project to draw this one. This art piece will be a limited print signed by the developers for those who supported the Kickstarter campaign with €150.

I worked so hard on it, and it took a lot of time. I actually finished the drawing right before writing this devlog. I’ve already written about it in the last devlog, but it has gone through many iterations and I am now finally happy with it. I hope the supporters that will receive this piece in the mail will enjoy it. I cannot wait to show you the whole drawing and I really believe it will look great when printed. I will contact a printing firm soon and have it printed. I've been printing a few drawings privately before so I have a few ideas of what paper type we should use and such.



Even though I just finished a huge art task, the next season is coming soon which in my opinion is the best season of the year: Summer! I’ve chosen the beautiful Alter real to be the breed on this splash art. I can’t wait to see how it will turn out. I also need to figure out what the rider should look like.




Astride is going to have a striding system so it’s a bit challenging to design. We have a way to predict where a stride will land in the future, so we can give the player feedback on whether or not they should speed up or slow down in order to make a perfect jump. The problem is all about accuracy. A slight speed change for the current stride might cause a larger change for a future stride so it gets difficult to adjust your speed, especially on a keyboard. I’ve added a way to automatically adjust the striding so that you will be able to make a jump. However, this is slower than doing it manually by speeding up or slowing down, so people who train themselves to not use this automatic adjustment mechanic will have an advantage.



It still looks rough and unpolished, but it is a work in progress after all.

We have a very simple motion-matching system in place that blends between animations based on movement. At the moment the horse will slide around when it doesn’t find an animation to blend into so it looks a bit funky and broken. The reason for this is that we haven’t put in all the animations yet. We wanted to explore sideways/lateral movement before the early access release but we decided that we were just going to have forward and turning animations instead. The rest will come later. You’re not going to do much lateral movement in show jumping anyways. Dressage, however, will have a lot of it.



I've also been working together with Maja to update the visuals of the menu. This is currently what it looks like.




Over the past few weeks, I have been working on upgrading the riding arena. The previous model had a few flaws that were a result of our style not being fully established at the time they were made, particularly when it came to buildings. It was a more tedious task than I had anticipated, but now that all the necessary models have been created and textured, I am very glad that we had the opportunity to do this before the Early Access release. I am happy to report that all the necessary modules have been imported into Unity, so you will see the upgraded version in our streams in the near future!



After completing this project, I was looking for a more relaxing task and decided to sketch some ideas for the environment. Although I cannot guarantee that these designs will be used, I find it helpful to have a starting point before working with the environment in Unity. I really hope that I can bring some color and create a relaxing space around the arena for you. This will also help us to get a step closer to making decisions regarding the style of the environment in Astride.



While we wait for progress on the environment, we have decided to upgrade our saddles as well. The current models are quite old and no longer fit with the style we have established. Now, they look much closer to a real saddle, and I am very excited to begin texturing them, as well as the tack that some of you have sent to us through Patreon!






This month started with me finishing up the eager animation as a variant to the stationary walk that shows a little more... Life and agency. If you have followed Green Horse’s streams you might have seen it. After I finished that, my main task these last few weeks has been to prepare the human character to be added on the horseback. With early access getting closer and closer we were originally not thinking we would be able to implement it before the early access, and were planning to add the character later. But after I started making the rig and setup to the character back in February, I decided that I want to try and implement a least viable product version of it before the early access.

In theory, it would be done fast, theory is nice that way. Practically though, you always meet setbacks and obstacles you don’t foresee.

Implementing the character is a lot harder than one would think. Adding a free-moving character is one thing, but having two characters moving in tandem and in constant contact is another. Though I don’t have personal experience with interacting animations between two characters in-game animation from before, I have heard that it is some of the harder stuff you can do depending on the interaction. I believe them. But before I get ahead of myself, I wanted to see if I could implement blending between feminine and masculine body shapes now that we have the meshes to do it.



Above is the end result after adding blendshapes to the clothes. Now, I have had the character riding on the horse before while testing possible solutions to future problems, like “How do we deal with different sitting positions between different saddle types?” My solution was to have a bone on the horse rig that the character could be retargeted to depending on the saddle. In the last few weeks, this evolved into its own saddle rig that has taken most of my time, as we want the saddle to be its own entity and not deform perfectly with the horse’s skin. Though I have to add that this is a special case and we probably won’t give other skin-tight tack the same treatment, as the time investment to reward ratio is too low to be feasible on other equipment.



Most of the time has gone to tweaking parameters to a script that moves the saddle according to the horse's movement as animating it by hand would swallow a huge amount of time from other work. The rig includes retargeting points that control the player character as that character is in another project file and helps a lot in getting the basic movement down without having to jump in between and cross-reference back and forth.

Placing the character has been the easier of what has been done this month as I already had in place the setup to have the character's hips be placed at the saddle position. Now to avoid having the character be a mannequin placed on top of a horse with no additional movement, I needed to animate the sits, hand, and foot position for each horse animation. While there are a lot of animation clips to go through, as long as I get the base position right it gets done quite fast.



All saddled up! Now I just have to bake the animations and test them in the game engine.


Please note that everything shown in these devlogs is mostly showcasing work that is in progress and is not finished. To see work in progress daily, join our Discord server community here! To get more information about Astride, check out our website.