May 6, 2023

Touge Shakai - Auranapse

New Track: Sakanotsuji

Sakanotsuji is a short but challenging touge, as part of the collab with 90's DSP

New Car: Mitsurin

For those who love flames and all out 4WD drifting, this is the car for you!

New Feature: Spectator Mode

For now, PvP Battles are still conducted only as 1v1 battles, but in both battle and free roam events, u can now spectate other drivers! (In free roam, activate it in the pause menu)

New Feature: Decal Sharing

For those that enjoy drawing decals within the game, you can now share your proud work with the community! You can now upload them for others to download. Shared decals will be credited to you, and others are not allowed to edit and reupload them.

In Garage -> Livery Editor -> New Decal -> Compound Decals, you can (U)pload or (B)rowse online compound decals

This feature will be expanded upon to share full car liveries
P.S. for our Kickstarter backers, we haven't forgotten your decals, it's still on our backlog to clear 🙏

Other changes and improvements

- Vote to restart PvP Race
- Improved garbage collection (hopefully less stuttering)
- Fixed replay recordings on rematching
- Added some more bodykit parts to NXR and Nouzen
- Unlocked all stock car rims for all other cars (only require purchasing)
- Increased XP gain on longer tracks
- Adjusted Soramine Colliders
- Fixed livery mapping on popup headlights

May 6, 2023

Chapter 7 Development Update!

Between Two Worlds - Drooskati Games

Hello everyone! It's time for an update on development and I'm excited to bring it to you. The worst is done, which was the design and creation of a bunch of all new environments. I had to learn new lighting techniques and processes, in addition to actually making it. But that is done, and work is moving along quickly. Here are some hard numbers:

Environment Design - 85%
Writing - 74%
Rendering - 53%
Animation - 60%
Code - 53%

There are a total of 19 scenes being worked on for the chapter, with clearly defined pathing. Each path, good vs evil, will get 13 full and unique scenes, in addition to a bunch of splitting within the remaining shared 6 scenes. For those playing both paths, this chapter is shaping up to provide 3+ hours of new content.

Right now, I'm trying to get at least two scenes posed and rendered per week minimum. The beta test team has already run through the first half of Chapter 7 and the issues they found have all been addressed. This matters because it cuts down the testing and fixing once the update is finished. Letting them go through it while I continue working makes everything go even faster.

If everything goes to plan, I am hoping to have the full update in their hands in ~5 weeks, and then out to all of you about a week after that.

That's it for this dev update! I plan to do one more in a few weeks with final notes before digging in for the final run. Can't wait to see your theories and ideas once Chapter 7 comes out!

-Droosk

May 6, 2023

Devlog 53 - Level 6-1

Rhythm Quest - ddrkirby

I'm continuing to just roll ahead with levels! It's funny, I feel like there was a long period of time when working on new levels and thinking about the mechanics felt intimidating, so I would just procrastinate on it and work on other miscellaneous things. But now I think it's the opposite (probably partly because all of my mechanics are known now), where I've gotten into the habit of just working on only levels. It's good though, the levels are something that need to be done 100%.

Anyways, I went straight ahead and finished up the first level in world 6, level 6-1!

Speed Zones

World 6 introduces one new mechanic, the red "speed zones" that increase scroll speed and change up the rhythmic meter into triplet patterns (quarter note triplets) temporarily:

As with some of my other mechanics, this might get mixed initial reactions from players (or at least, that's the expectation I'm setting up for myself...). For people who don't "get" triplet meter, it might seem sort of like an arbitrary changeup/speedup that's hard to react to. I experimented with having a sort of 2-beat "lead-in" to prep you for the new meter, but I was pretty unhappy with how that sounded (messy...) so I took it out. (Maybe that'll be an optional toggle someday?)

For now I'm just trying to give the player some easy speed zones at first so that they can listen to and get used to the rhythm, before I throw actual quarter-note triplets at them:

You might not have noticed it until I pointed it out (now it'll stick out like a sore thumb...), but none of the speed zones have any height ramps -- they're all completely flat. I couldn't really get the "conveyor belt" graphic to look reasonably good at an angle, so I just decided to add that as a restriction (the level generator will probably be really confused if you try to add ramps in the middle of it). I'm totally ok with that though, it makes them simple to read...and I actually have the same restriction for spike enemies (they can travel across ramps, but the actual jump needs to be on flat ground), so it's not really a new thing. I guess technically I can support height changes in the form of air jump combos and flight paths, but those haven't come up yet.

Visual Identity

This one was easy since I had already been thinking for a long time to do an outer space theme for world 6 (maybe sort of a trope to have the final area be space-themed?). One of the worries here is that all of the level backdrops are just going to look similar since they'll all just be dark skies with stars, but hopefully I can make them a little bit distinct by experimenting with different foreground elements and such.

For this level I went with sort of a "spiral galaxy"-type drawing with a bright orb in the middle. In hindsight, I probably could have drawn it bigger...but I guess this way it's more of a single element rather than filling most of the screen, which works too. It looks like there's all sorts of colors in there, but it's really just the 8-color palette, but with a bunch of translucent layers. It was actually quite fun to draw, as it felt like more of a painterly (impressionistic?) approach throwing blobs and dots of colors everywhere rather than the geometric shapes from world 5. You can also see that I'm making heavy use of the spraypaint tool for the first time here, particularly in the soft "nebula"-like patterns in the background.

As usual, I tried to add in some amount of variation in the color palette depending on the different sections of music. Here I switch to a completely black background color for the first "main" section of the song to up the contrast level a little bit:

I'm hopeful about this art style for world 6! Hopefully I'll be able to draw some nice backdrops by experimenting with this general direction. I was a bit worried at first since I feel like "space" art tends to not do well with such limited color palettes, but it's turning out fine with clever use of dithering-like effects and translucency.

Musical Identity

Unlike with world 5, I didn't do a whole ton of musical exploration before starting off on this level...I sort of just "winged it" and went with some rough ideas, seeing what came out of them. I knew I wanted to try playing around with whole-tone scale melodies, but I was also interested in exploring more varied bass sounds (maybe even dubstep-esque), as well as featuring prominent use of arpeggios and low-pass/high-pass filter automation.

Here's a snippet showcasing the "wub" bass featured in this track, as well as a triangle wave synth that plays a whole tone scale pattern. I dunno, somehow wobbly basses and triplet rhythms almost seems like a bit of a musical trope...

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/53-wholetoneandbass.mp3

Here's another snippet, showing off some low-pass filter automation on gated chords, as well as an arpeggio that has some long reverb on it (spacey!).

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/53-arpfilter.mp3

And here's a longer snippet of the main buildup in the song. I use a different (but still-prominent) bass here, and slowly open up the filter as it builds. As with world 5, I'm making heavy use of triangle-wave tom fills to accentuate the rhythmic changeups.

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/53-buildup.mp3

Level Select

A new world also means a new level select theme! Here's a short video where you can hear that in action:

I had a few false starts on this one before I landed on the idea, but it sounds great! I love how the major IV -> minor iv progression works here. You can hopefully hear the low-pass filter automation on the chorded synth, as well as the reverbed short arpeggio pattern -- same ideas as in the level.

There's still a bunch more to explore with speed zones and how they combine with the other mechanics, which should be interesting to figure out over the course of these next 4 levels! I might have to tread a tricky balance since fast rhythms (e.g. double-hit enemies) are =really= fast in speed zones, so those will only be feasible if I take the overall tempo down a notch...

May 6, 2023

Peter is catching butterflies!

Everdream Valley - robert.wozinski

Hello!

The other day, my friend told me that butterflies are very precious because they have a special way of transforming, they are very pretty, and… hard to catch. I offered that I can catch a few butterflies so that we can admire them together and ask them how it is to be a butterfly.

There are many interesting species of butterflies that look absolutely gorgeous. To catch them you don’t need much more than patience and a catching net. I figured also that, to catch butterflies you need to move like a butterfly, so I built two wings on my shoulders and moved dancingly and swinged around together with them.

My friend couldn’t stop laughing. I guess I eat a few too many pies to be so light and agile like them… In any case, I tried and tried and danced with butterflies swinging my net around them and I didn’t catch any! I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong.

We sat with my friend on the grass and laughed about my wings and dances, at the same time I was sad that I couldn’t make my friend happy.

“It’s not about the butterflies” my friend said. “What matters is how much you tried to help me and how fun it was!”. And literally the second my friend said it, a big, blue butterfly with purple shades sat on my nose! I couldn't believe it!

“Hey, you won’t catch us if you force it! We come when we want to! Just come and ask if we have time! Anyway, have a good day!“ said the butterfly and flew off. Those butterflies are really magical!

That was one of the most amazing days I had on the farm, even though we ended up with our catching net empty.

I hope you also see butterflies when you come to visit!

Oink oink 🐷

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May 6, 2023

[Conqueror's Blade] May. 6 Notice on Hacks

Conqueror's Blade - Conqueror‘s Blade Community

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