This chapter focuses on the Virginian American Branch of the Council. In previous chapters, there were mentions, so this one elaborates more on it (especially why the supernatural creatures dislike them). This is still Day 1, but it is a few weeks after Ben captured Emily.


Tom had changed the distribution of Renpy Nightly. The channel I will focus on is Fixes, which can fix any bugs or errors from Renpy. So if you go to credits and see “Nightly,” this is still the released version of Renpy 8.1. 😊


I believe I had implemented a bit of this in previous minor updates. I transferred a few things to JSON files and now use them to manage things like the gallery, etc. It keeps the Screens clean, so I can troubleshoot that rather than scrolling through a long list. Furthermore, it updates the moment you launch. 😊 It is also a step to reduce errors on my end.

You don’t see this file, but I separated critical information, such as buildname, into a new file. This enables me to ensure the correct names are displayed (and I don’t see a visual novel called “Fire of Life: New Day Beta” in the main channel).

As far as I know, there are either no bugs or less visible ones. If any crop up, let me know, and I will fix it as soon as possible. 😊

FIXES:

- Fixed junk stack (chips etc) count not being saved so all stacks restored with 1 making the chip minigame pretty confusing on load.
- Fixed the modified disposition table not being cleared after each game session causing dispositions from previous sessions to bleed into new ones
- Fixed being able to enter the bed while telling Rook 25 abou the traitor’s identity after leaving the VT
- Disabled the "get out of bed" button on the cabin bed, it was unnecessary and caused issues.
- Fix for light models in mission ops not changing skin (going dark) when the light state of mission ops is shut off.
- Fixed Kiril in the brig having a weapon
- Fixed the flashlight mode not being activated properly during the traitor fight

TWEAKS:

-Removed pointless source-less light in B8’s cabin


IMPROVEMENTS:

- The end of the traitor fight got some important polish to better communicate what happens.
-Traitor fight A.I improvements
- Hid the initial connection/dream sequence walls so players don't start in blackness. The path ahead is more obvious now, and players are now crouched to start with.
-Various improvements to conversations and choreography in the last half of the narrative.
-10 new Info Console articles, a bunch more existing articles polished up.
-Polished up all in-person Rook 25 choreo for if player kills traitor in cold blood. She is fully present and very emotional now.
- Improvements to the chipbank repair minigame presentation. Will always show the context even if the player has no chips to insert and a red hand.
-New Ending work:
-Briefing choreography got a complete pass. Everyone is fully present now.
-Briefing now features the actual Churchill Tower.

Small hotfix release for today, fixed:

• Started to reorganise the gunlist so only weapons available for class are shown. Not quite there yet though
  
• Fixed minigun being locked
  
• Pistols are now able to be fired quicker after equipping

Thanks to all those that have submitted bug reports!

Hello!

I've updated the game to set some of the new UI things live. It's taken a while to get this far with it since it's essentially meant breaking parts of the UI completely and then piecing it all back together. But it should be good to go now!
There's more UI work coming in the near future though, most notably when it comes to selecting buildings. Specifically the decoration tab has gotten too heavy with buttons and in some cases due to decorations sometimes having several variants. I'm working on a solution to condense heavier tabs to fewer items using expandable item selections.

0.862 -> 0.863
- Added palm tree variant of one of the side decorations.

- Added customizable resource display bar.
- Added being able to hide UI elements individually.
- Added additional UI scaling.

- Adjusted icon and text sizes in parts of the UI.

- Fixed bug where there would be a small amount of VAT income, even if policy was turned off.
- Fixed missing night lighting for new commercial buildings.
- Fixed part of the main menu being cut off in 21:9 aspect ratio resolutions.
- Fixed scrollable windows not working with scroll wheel in main menu.

The customizable resource tab at the top of the screen has a known issue in that certain disaplayable items will light up green when increasing even if an increase is negative. An example of this is crime.
This will be addressed in the next version. :)

/ Nick

• Fixed Sniper and Shotgun damage
  
• Fixed start music env
  
• Improved AI behavior

CONTROLLER:

The only known remaining controller issue is that the Defense Minigame is too hard when playing with it. We are working on a solution to this. Otherwise, the entire game should now be perfectly playable with a controller. Kindly let us know if you run into any controller troubles...thank-you!

- Drop down menus now show what is currently active and default the controller selection to that entry
- Reports screen now has controller support
- Info Console screen now has controller support
- Missions screen now has controller support

FIXES:

- Fixed junk stack (chips etc) count not being saved so all stacks restored with 1 making the chip minigame pretty confusing on load.
- Fixed the modified disposition table not being cleared after each game session causing dispositions from previous sessions to bleed into new ones
- Fixed being able to enter the bed while telling Rook 25 about the traitor’s identity after leaving the VT
- Disabled the "get out of bed" button on the cabin bed, it was unnecessary and caused issues.
- Fix for light models in mission ops not changing skin (going dark) when the light state of mission ops is shut off.
- Fixed Kiril in the brig having a weapon
- Fixed the flashlight mode not being activated properly during the traitor fight

TWEAKS:

-Removed pointless source-less light in B8’s cabin


IMPROVEMENTS:

- The end of the traitor fight got some important polish to better communicate what happens.
-Traitor fight A.I improvements
- Hid the initial connection/dream sequence walls so players don't start in blackness. The path ahead is more obvious now, and players are now crouched to start with.
-Various improvements to conversations and choreography in the last half of the narrative.
-10 new Info Console articles, a bunch more existing articles polished up.
-Polished up all in-person Rook 25 choreo for if player kills traitor in cold blood. She is fully present and very emotional now.
- Improvements to the chipbank repair minigame presentation. Will always show the context even if the player has no chips to insert and a red hand.
-New Ending work:
-Briefing choreography got a complete pass. Everyone is fully present now.
-Briefing now features the actual Churchill Tower.

Laser trap has been added, this one is slightly different from the others. Beam weapon that sweeps around a range periodically.

Few other alterations to traps has been made to streamline some things about trap related deaths.

Hey everyone!

Today I wanted to give you some insights about the fluids in Shapez 2!

As always, be sure to wishlist & follow Shapez 2 to get a notification on important updates:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/

Alright, so let's dive into the devlog!



Shapez 1 didn't have fluids, and colors were simply items that you could mine, just like shapes. The painter would then take those items as an input and modify the shape color:



This worked, but for Shapez 2 we wanted something more interesting and also more "visual" and easy to understand. This is why we are introducing fluids:


The first step to acquire fluids is to find a fluid resource on the infinite map. In the area close to the HUB you will be able to find the 3 primary colors: red, green and blue. Farther apart, we can imagine that there will also be secondary colors, but that's not settled on yet.



We still haven't figured how those fluid resources should look, so they are still placeholders in the game.
Daniel already made some concepts for them, but all of these are super early!



Once you found a resource to mine, you can place a fluid extractor island on it. Again, this is only a placeholder:



There is already a concept for it as well, but again, very early!



On the miner itself, there will be a fluid patch, similar to the shape miner, where you can place pumps to extract fluids. Pumps currently extract 1200 Liters per minute, but this is not final. Currently the unit used to measure fluid volume is liters, although we could imagine introducing additional units in case we ever want to add steam for example.




To transport fluids on the island, you can then place different types of pipes. There are straight, corner, junction and cross pipes. As everything in the game is open, we wanted the pipes to also be open so you can see the fluids actually flow through your factory!



Fluids are simulated at a fixed tickrate right now. Basically every pipe has a "storage" called "FluidContainer" internally. The size of that storage is 50 L for pipes currently.
Every container then stores the current flow to the adjacent containers.
When updating the simulation, it basically goes like this:

1. Iterate over all containers and "spread" fluids.
Every container can only store one fluid at a time, so once it is "tagged" with that fluid, it can only store that fluid until it is entirely empty again. More about that in the "Mixed Pipes" section.

2. Compute & propagate pressure differences
Pressure in a container is simply computed as value / maxValue. The simulation then tries to achieve a state of "balance" where all containers the system have the same pressure.
However, just trying to average the container levels won't work great, because then the throughput will be extremely low at some point.
Thus, instead of storing only the pressure, we also store a flow rate, which is determining how much fluid from one container flows to another container in one tick. The flow rate only changes very slowly, and increases / decreases based on the pressure difference.
There are still some issues that a lot of fluids simulations typically have, for example dealing with waves. But we already have a few ideas how to tackle them!

3. Clamping & clearing
In the last step, all containers that are empty are now un-tagged, so they can receive a different type of fluid again. Also in case any container did over- or underflow, it will be clamped.


While the fluid simulation can be a little technical, our goals is and was that if you just want to use fluids, it should be intuitive and "just work". With the current system in place and the visual indicators, we feel that already is the case, but we are very interested in your feedback!

Since mixed fluids in the same pipe wouldn't really make sense, we don't allow them. Instead, every fluid container can only store one fluid and is tagged with that. Transfer between containers then only works if they have the same fluid:



There are also buttons to flush pipes or the entire network, in case you mess up.


In order to produce secondary and/or tertiary colors, you can mix colors with the color mixer:




Fluids can be transported up and down, however, in order to transport them up you will have to place a pump:



The pump will limit the flow to one direction, so you can also use it as a gate to prevent backflow:



We are also considering to add a building just for that, in case it becomes a commonly used pattern.

Instead of going for an overly complex system, the rules for cross-layer transport are very simple: Fluids only go up in a pump, and they go down in regular pipes. This should be very intuitive and still allow for some interesting designs. However since it's not final - let us know what you think!


In case you want to store some fluids, there is also a fluid tank, and because of the cross-layer pipes, you can also stack them on top of each other:



Keep in mind that, because the simulation effectively averages the pressure, the tanks will only fill once you have a surplus of fluid in the system.


There will be different types of painters in the game, for now we have planned a topmost painter and a full painter. The topmost painter only paints the highest layer of a shape where as the full painter paints the whole shape (and needs more paint in exchange).

Here's an early concept of the topmost painter in action (the animation is currently broken):



As you might have seen, there are multiple inputs - and again, due to the multi-dimensionality of the game, you can build some pretty cool & compact setups!




If you read the past devlogs, you might wonder how you actually transport fluids between islands, since there is no building space for pipes in between.

Disclaimer: The following mechanics are work in progress and we don't know whether they will end up exactly like this in the game. However, let me explain what we have right now!

To transport fluids, first you have to produce barrels. Barrels are produced from shapes, and the size & color of the barrel depends on the used shape:



Once you produced the barrels, you can now fill them using the fluid packer:



Then transport them between islands and unpack them again.



Since barrel production is pretty slow, you can also recycle the production by returning the empty barrels again (as seen in the above gif)

We are not 100% certain this feature will be a great fit, so be sure to leave your feedback on it, so we know whether you like it or not!


As soon as colors are a crucial part of the gameplay, we have to think about color-blind support as well.
We are still looking for good ways to make it easier in case you are affected, such as patterns, or different symbols for fluids. If you have any ideas please let us know!



I hope you enjoyed the devlog, and I wish you a nice remaining weekend!

And as always, be sure to wishlist & follow Shapez 2 to get a notification on important updates:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/


~Tobias

Hey everyone!

Today I wanted to give you some insights about the fluids in Shapez 2!

As always, be sure to wishlist & follow Shapez 2 to get a notification on important updates:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/

Alright, so let's dive into the devlog!



Shapez 1 didn't have fluids, and colors were simply items that you could mine, just like shapes. The painter would then take those items as an input and modify the shape color:



This worked, but for Shapez 2 we wanted something more interesting and also more "visual" and easy to understand. This is why we are introducing fluids:


The first step to acquire fluids is to find a fluid resource on the infinite map. In the area close to the HUB you will be able to find the 3 primary colors: red, green and blue. Farther apart, we can imagine that there will also be secondary colors, but that's not settled on yet.



We still haven't figured how those fluid resources should look, so they are still placeholders in the game.
Daniel already made some concepts for them, but all of these are super early!



Once you found a resource to mine, you can place a fluid extractor island on it. Again, this is only a placeholder:



There is already a concept for it as well, but again, very early!



On the miner itself, there will be a fluid patch, similar to the shape miner, where you can place pumps to extract fluids. Pumps currently extract 1200 Liters per minute, but this is not final. Currently the unit used to measure fluid volume is liters, although we could imagine introducing additional units in case we ever want to add steam for example.




To transport fluids on the island, you can then place different types of pipes. There are straight, corner, junction and cross pipes. As everything in the game is open, we wanted the pipes to also be open so you can see the fluids actually flow through your factory!



Fluids are simulated at a fixed tickrate right now. Basically every pipe has a "storage" called "FluidContainer" internally. The size of that storage is 50 L for pipes currently.
Every container then stores the current flow to the adjacent containers.
When updating the simulation, it basically goes like this:

1. Iterate over all containers and "spread" fluids.
Every container can only store one fluid at a time, so once it is "tagged" with that fluid, it can only store that fluid until it is entirely empty again. More about that in the "Mixed Pipes" section.

2. Compute & propagate pressure differences
Pressure in a container is simply computed as value / maxValue. The simulation then tries to achieve a state of "balance" where all containers the system have the same pressure.
However, just trying to average the container levels won't work great, because then the throughput will be extremely low at some point.
Thus, instead of storing only the pressure, we also store a flow rate, which is determining how much fluid from one container flows to another container in one tick. The flow rate only changes very slowly, and increases / decreases based on the pressure difference.
There are still some issues that a lot of fluids simulations typically have, for example dealing with waves. But we already have a few ideas how to tackle them!

3. Clamping & clearing
In the last step, all containers that are empty are now un-tagged, so they can receive a different type of fluid again. Also in case any container did over- or underflow, it will be clamped.


While the fluid simulation can be a little technical, our goals is and was that if you just want to use fluids, it should be intuitive and "just work". With the current system in place and the visual indicators, we feel that already is the case, but we are very interested in your feedback!

Since mixed fluids in the same pipe wouldn't really make sense, we don't allow them. Instead, every fluid container can only store one fluid and is tagged with that. Transfer between containers then only works if they have the same fluid:



There are also buttons to flush pipes or the entire network, in case you mess up.


In order to produce secondary and/or tertiary colors, you can mix colors with the color mixer:




Fluids can be transported up and down, however, in order to transport them up you will have to place a pump:



The pump will limit the flow to one direction, so you can also use it as a gate to prevent backflow:



We are also considering to add a building just for that, in case it becomes a commonly used pattern.

Instead of going for an overly complex system, the rules for cross-layer transport are very simple: Fluids only go up in a pump, and they go down in regular pipes. This should be very intuitive and still allow for some interesting designs. However since it's not final - let us know what you think!


In case you want to store some fluids, there is also a fluid tank, and because of the cross-layer pipes, you can also stack them on top of each other:



Keep in mind that, because the simulation effectively averages the pressure, the tanks will only fill once you have a surplus of fluid in the system.


There will be different types of painters in the game, for now we have planned a topmost painter and a full painter. The topmost painter only paints the highest layer of a shape where as the full painter paints the whole shape (and needs more paint in exchange).

Here's an early concept of the topmost painter in action (the animation is currently broken):



As you might have seen, there are multiple inputs - and again, due to the multi-dimensionality of the game, you can build some pretty cool & compact setups!




If you read the past devlogs, you might wonder how you actually transport fluids between islands, since there is no building space for pipes in between.

Disclaimer: The following mechanics are work in progress and we don't know whether they will end up exactly like this in the game. However, let me explain what we have right now!

To transport fluids, first you have to produce barrels. Barrels are produced from shapes, and the size & color of the barrel depends on the used shape:



Once you produced the barrels, you can now fill them using the fluid packer:



Then transport them between islands and unpack them again.



Since barrel production is pretty slow, you can also recycle the production by returning the empty barrels again (as seen in the above gif)

We are not 100% certain this feature will be a great fit, so be sure to leave your feedback on it, so we know whether you like it or not!


As soon as colors are a crucial part of the gameplay, we have to think about color-blind support as well.
We are still looking for good ways to make it easier in case you are affected, such as patterns, or different symbols for fluids. If you have any ideas please let us know!



I hope you enjoyed the devlog, and I wish you a nice remaining weekend!

And as always, be sure to wishlist & follow Shapez 2 to get a notification on important updates:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/


~Tobias

• Added ivy and vine decorations to mansion and sewer.
  
• Ammo counts removed from quick slot panel for cleaner HUD view.
  
• Rage mode now adds correct amount of flamethrower ammo.
  
• Audio update and tuning in secret area.
  
• Command console function added.