Jun 16, 2023

Memoirs of a Battle Brothel - manlymousedan

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to take some time to inform you what my plans are for the future.

As many of you may already know, game development is a risky endeavor. It’s hard to make money in gamedev just to pay the bills, much less fund future games.

Don’t worry! This isn’t a post about how I’m running out of money because I’m not. But I would like to lay out the cards on the table: gamedev is monumentally challenging, especially financially. In this respect, I am no different than the thousands of my fellow gamemakers.

It’s just another rat race, and I have to grind and crunch in order to make ends meet. I don’t mind, this is what I love to do. A few years ago, I quit a very lucrative and stable corporate job to work on Memoirs full time.

Yeah, it was pretty stupid of me. But it was a gamble that paid off. Memoirs is one of those extremely rare solodev success stories. It won’t make the news like something on the level of Stardew Valley, but I now have a little runway that I can survive on to make my next game.

Just a little runway, not a lot. And the game I want to make is a beast. It’ll be an upgrade over Memoirs in every way: the mechanics will be refined, the combat tightened, more characters, a darker storyline, a more open game world.

This is the game that after more than a decade in solodev, I will be pouring all my ambition into. It will be my attempt at achieving breakout success on the level of Stardew Valley and Undertale.

This will be Vampire Syndicate.

It will be a direct sequel to Memoirs of a Battle Brothel, with the same setting, many of the same characters and factions, etc.

So what’s different?

Well, there’ll be a lot of changes, but the most striking difference is the switch from pixel art to 3d renders. I have absolutely nothing against pixel art, in fact I loved the graphics that I used for my previous games.

This art shift is for two reasons:

I can create and edit 3d renders easier than I can with pixel art
The 3d aesthetic fits a vampire game closer than pixel art would

That being said, I am still keeping the anime-esque look for characters, which you can toggle.

Vampire Syndicate will be the next chapter of MoonFall’s story, and if you liked Memoirs, I hope you join me for this one too. An updated demo will be released on June 19th for Steam’s Next Fest.

Dev for Vampire Syndicate hit the ground running almost as soon as the 1.0 dev for Memoirs finished. The last few months have been super busy for me, but I’m glad that I almost finally have something major to share.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that I’m abandoning Memoirs (even though it is already long past 1.0).

I still have at least two major, free content updates in mind for Memoirs. Each of these will include romance-able new characters with their own quests. These will be released sometime in the near future, and I will update the roadmap as the last one is outdated by now.

Thanks again for your support. As always, I appreciate your feedback and suggestions.

Jun 16, 2023

Patch Notes - Version 1.4.1

MF-01 Aerostrike - LMG

We interrupt your daily flight to bring you a new patch. It's the last patch before the Steam Next Fest, and it focuses on visual improvements. All menu buttons, windows, and notifications have received a face lift. Some UI elements like the Radar were also improved.

The Mouse Cursor and Weapon Crosshairs have also been updated with new models. They are slightly larger and of higher quality than the homemade ones available before. They still retain their old general shape, so it should still be clear which weapon is which.

Finally, there are a couple of minor bug fixes included. The bug that locked mouse controls during Transmissions was back, so I modified the Transmission Window code to bypass it entirely. Screenshots should display the correct weapon crosshairs now. And some tiny bugs related to Hel's Fighters were squashed as well.

Here is a full list of patch notes:

Main Menu:

Adjusted the height of the Demo file options.
The patch notes window is visible by default.
> I might replace the button to toggle it on-and-off with a different function, or remove it altogether.

Visuals:

Replaced all buttons with new sprite models.
Replaced all windows with new sprite models.
Replaced all notification pop-ups with new sprite models.
Replaced all weapon crosshairs with new sprite models.
Replaced the old mouse cursor with a new sprite model.
Replaced the old lock-on with a new sprite model.
Minor modification to the Hel's Fighters prompt screen model.

Options:

Adjusted the height of the Audio Menu options.

Bugs:

Fixed a bug where screenshots would display the wrong crosshair when using Mouse & Keyboard.
Fixed a few more instances of mouse controls being locked off during Transmissions.
Fixed an error that counted Spinner IIs as Spinners on the credits stats screen.
Fixed the Hel's Fighters map pinging Arena 2 throughout Day 1.
> It's only supposed to ping it until you complete it once.

Techical Changes:

Modified the ending stats screen to not display Campaign-related information for Rebel Ops and Hel's Fighters.

Steam-exclusive Changes (does not affect non-steam releases):

Added a "Wishlist on Steam" button to the main menu.

That will be the last patch for Aerostrike before Steam Next Fest begins next week. Be sure to give the new mode a try, so far it has been very well received across the board! Like I mentioned before, more content will be added to the mode in the coming weeks.

If anyone is met with any sort of weird bug, or simply thinks that the new UI should glow in the dark, feel free to leave a comment, send an email to the support address, or make a post in either of the Steam support threads for MF-01 Aerostrike.

Stay safe pilots!

Jun 16, 2023

Community Newsletter: June 16, 2023

Kindred Fates - joey

Alpha Combat Arena

We apologize for the radio silence regarding the Alpha. We’re full steam ahead on our current internal milestone at the moment. Once that finishes, we’ll have a ton of very exciting things to show (many of which will make it into the Alpha!). Unfortunately for the time being, we have to shut down the public servers for now. You will still be able to play in the practice room and use Private matchmaking, so this isn’t the end of the Alpha! We’re extremely sorry that we can’t continue to keep the public servers running, but the expense can’t be justified with the amount of active players currently. Again, we apologize for how long it’s been since the last update and for the need to take the public servers down, but please trust that we’re doing everything we can to make Kindred Fates the absolute best it can be. Thank you to those of you who have spent so much time playing the Alpha!

Single Player

We’ve started the process of modeling Violet_Fang. It’s looking good so far! We’re also continuing to work on North_Star’s model. We finished modeling a variety of clothing outfits for townsfolk NPCs.

The unique models for both Mr. L.K and Mr. Green_Collar are complete! Mr. L.K is rigged, while Mr. Green_Collar is up next. The animations for Mr. L.K were completed earlier using a placeholder model, so it will be fairly easy to hook those up to the custom model now that it’s rigged!
Speaking of animations, we’ve made some progress here! Little_Bandit is in the early stages of animation, and several generic player character/human NPC animations are either complete or in review. These include things like Foraging, Surprise, Talking, Laughing, and more! The child models we referenced in the last newsletter are mostly using modified adult animations, which have now been hooked up to the rig. Briar_Heart’s animation set is complete!
We have a ton of new VFX in the works! The VFX for an unrevealed Light type ability is in progress. The impact VFX for this one in particular looks really good! Shield has a new VFX, which you can see on Twitter. We’re also nearly finished creating a VFX that will be used in the opening cutscene.
We began using a new visual shader that improves the look of both humans and Kinfolk! The improvement is significant, and we believe that it helps both types of characters look more “present” in the world. We think it’s an especially big improvement to human characters. It needs some more tweaking before we can show it off on human characters, but we’d like to show you how it looks on some Kinfolk!

Changing our character shader included reimplementing all of our character customization, changes to dodge color, and changes to damage visualization. The new shader comes with some major feature improvements that give the characters more visual flexibility.
Outlining for the opening and subsequent cutscenes continues. This process includes animating placeholder models and characters to the specifications of the cutscene, which we can then replace later when the custom models are ready. We implemented the dialogue related to the opening cutscene, so the animators can more easily follow the intended timing.
The current boss fight we’re working on is shaping up nicely. The boss room is almost completely modeled, pending some final changes. We’ve created the combat AI for this boss, and two new attacks that they will use. This fight is already looking super cool, and we’re excited for it!
Our internal builds now upload to Steam! This speeds up QA tremendously, since the team can download each update at a time automatically, instead of needing to redownload the entire game every time there’s a new build.
Kinfolk descriptions are in the process of implemented into the Compendium. We also added some new townsfolk NPCs along with the dialogue for them.
We also spent some time on general implementation and polish

-Implemented child characters into the game.

-Polished animation implementation for Puddle_Hopper, Little_Wing, Tide_Walker, and the player character.

-Polished the in-game UI.

-Made several improvements to our NPC AI in regards to how they move while in combat.

-Added greater control over when NPCs use headlook in combat.

-Added more flexibility in our Combat AI action selection framework for adjusting when/why NPCs choose to do a particular sequence of attacks.

Community

Tailor backers have until June 29th to submit their designs. If you have this tier, check your email! If you’re confused, send a message to support@skymill.com.
Scribe backers have until July 31st to submit their titles. If you have this tier, check your email! If you’re confused, send a message to support@skymill.com.

Jun 16, 2023

Survival Changes, new Achievements, new functionality, and bugfixes on the way!

MH-Zombie - raulboy426

Hey team!

I know it's been a bit since the initial bug reports from the Island were submitted, but as I was fixing them I started adding a few related features and before I knew it I was deep in a revamp of how Survival works, with the achievements to support it. I'm still a little on the fence about how to handle the update- I think it makes the gameplay way more fun, but the initial realism and hesitation to use on-screen vs on-aircraft UI are diminished. There are already so many modes that I think adding an additional layer of moding to Survival (simulation vs arcade or something) would be overkill, although it would be an opportunity to make it a little easier/predictable to win the game, with simulation on a body-count timer (zombie spawns turn off after a given number) and arcade with a set minimum enemies at all times and the upgrades this new update will have, with no ability to actually "win".

Let me know your thoughts!

I'm still a little ways out from release- I need to decide on the above, and do more bugtesting, but here's a list of what you'll see so far:

Field of View page, with FOV slider and the ability to change seats (1st person) or sides of the aircraft (3rd person). Depending on your monitor, the game choses the FOV I think the game looks best in for a given resolution, and if you don't touch the slider that's what it'll be. Once you touch it, it'll remember that FOV for subsequent sessions.

Scaled points awarded for different enemies- Zombies 1, Soldiers 2, SAWs 3, MANPADs 4, and Tanks 10.

Points Multiplication- the in-game badges you earn (Sharpshooter, Multi-Kills, Aussie etc.) award a timed points-multiplier. Keep them strung together well enough, and they start adding up. Multiplier with timer is currently displayed below center-screen at .6 opacity. I've tried moving it and it's just not nearly as dopamine inducing haha...

Instant Reload- awarded at 30x Multiplier. (+ badge & achievement)

ONC Explosives- (2x higher yield explosives in HEDP, Laser, 30mm, Seeker, and Cluster Mines, with pretty blue explosions) awarded at 40x Multiplier. (+ badge & achievement)

Laser Minigun- (2x greater effective radius; 2x faster projectiles, and pretty red laser beams) awarded at 50x Multiplier (+ badge & achievement)

Over 9,000 badge & achievement - awarded at 9,000 points

Plus a couple other achievements, one of which should have shipped with the very first build on here but somehow slipped the imagination until recently.

Notable bugfixes:

Look Inversion will now persist through new sessions.

Helicopter startup sound is 50% quieter.

Perimeter alarm is a new sound, with lower volume, lower tone, and only plays once per perimeter incursion; if there's already an incursion going on, another collider trip will only trigger the "Disappointment" dialogue.

Like I said, I'm still a ways out from publishing this update, but your feedback on the above could help make it happen faster, and I'm working hard to get it out.

Thanks for all your support and encouragement!

-Raulboy