• Updated the help pages to match the new inventory and cart content.
  
• Updated the initial conversation to reflect the change in help key.
  
• Enemy damage now scales with encounter difficulty.
  
• Wasp claw attacks are now more accurate.
  
• Made the rolling storm cloud effect on higher level enemies more obvious/less plain white.

• You can no longer lock yourself to the assembly bench by trying to strike the work piece while still installing it.
  
• Overwriting save files now works as intended.

• Investigating key-mapping
  
• Better enemy AI
  
• Following so many huge changes in such a short period, the pace of updates will slow to weekly/fortnightly depending on feature size/urgency of issue. Cannot dev with no sleep forever. I'll still be checking in daily to catch major issues though.

Hello,

Have you wondered what makes Silica so unique and what it took to combine the RTS and FPS elements in one game? This is what Dram got to present as a special guest during the Game Access Conference in Brno this summer.

We managed to break down his presentation into 3 smaller blog posts to give some insight for those interested in game design. We'll also dive into what challenges Dram faced when creating Silica and how he managed to overcome them. So let's get right into it!


The main reason why Dram wanted to have an authentic scale in Silica was because he wanted to put across the scale of the world of Baltarus. The scale of the vehicles and building being so large gives an interesting feel. It's a feel that Dram himself recalls seeing in Dune 2 where the vehicles were very large compared to the troops, and he wanted to portray that in Silica.




There were several challenges when it came to large buildings, one in particular was building placement. Because the terrain is not flat but more "alive", it was difficult to write a system to snap the building on the terrain without having a part floating. To solve this, Dram defined point on the building which had to be beneath ground and points which had to be above ground. Another issue was recalculating the navigation graph around the building when it was placed or when it was destroyed, because vehicles need to avoid the buildings and troops need to be able to walk on the buildings.




This is the fabrication technique - the visuals that players see when a building is being constructed. It was chosen mainly because it was the most technically feasible for the massive team size. It was simple to set up because Dram had these square shaped pre-fabs. That way he could cover the building and therefore do it so they progressively appear, cover the whole area where the building should appear and once the building is complete, they disappear. One of the main inspirations behind this, were 3D printing techniques!




When Dram was working on Take On Mars, he did a post-mortem on that, where he stated that it is a bad idea to do everything physics driven! Evidently we went back on that, but the reason at the time was mainly because processors were slow and because it adds a ton of issues. However, thanks to the experience with Take On Mars, it was much more easy to go with everything physics driven in Silica. Another reason why physics was the way to go, is because the tires of very large vehicles, for example the Harvester, would be very difficult to simulate without physics and subsequently, their movement would look very incorrect given the fact that they need to roll over obstacles.




Because Silica blends two genres, Dram couldn't take the route of having simplified colliders, for example pipes where you can see through them because they're hollow but the collider would cover the whole thing. Because the FPS element exists there, and these pipes are large, you could theoretically shoot through them because it's what a player would expect from an FPS. Having the bullets would bounce off the side, it would look very strange and in Dram's words "you wouldn't fulfill the expectations of the players of the world from an FPS perspective". Plus, Dram thinks it's more interesting to have these accurate colliders and things bouncing where they're meant to! Given the fact that there are realistic ballistics where bullets can ricochet, there's penetration, it's important to have realistic colliders.




One of the challenges with regards to colliders, is that the more complex the colliders are, the bigger the problem is to update the navmesh. It takes much more time compared to a simple box as a collider. The challenge is to make complex colliders but not too complex because then you run into performance issues. In the case of Silica, the more complex the collider, if the crabs were walking on them, it would take up more performance because there are much more physics calculations required on the actual collisions on the collider.

We'll let you digest this first part of Dram's presentation but if you want to hear the whole interview in depth, you can check out the video!



The next part should be coming out soon so stay tuned and we'll see you on Baltarus!

Hey everyone, my name is Zoltan, the solo developer of Stellar Sovereigns a new 4X space strategy game released 8th of March this year, I am happy to announce its biggest discount yet 40% off during Steam’s Summer Sale.

Since its release the game got a ton of updates, fixes and improvements let me list some of the highlights here, but you can find the entire journey on steam in chronological order:

• The Derelicts Update added drifting derelicts to deep space, from them ancient warships can be recovered. Adding 6 new ships the player can find 3 capital class and 3 escort class, each with unique abilities or weapons for the player to boost their forces.
  
• A mysterious shadowy menace guards these ancient relicts and ambushes all that tries to claim them.
  
• A highly requested feature to save and apply vessel designs to construct or retrofit vessels.
  
• 3 new 2D star chart generators Concentric Circles, Spiral and Clustered for when you prefer a more traditional 4X map layout.
  
• A ton of love was recently put into extending colonial development with new sector improvements along with a dedicated tech tree to unlock their full potential.
  
• To top it up a bonus avenue of colonial development been added, that takes advantage of the planet’s moon allowing the player to construct districts on the moon that unlocks various bonuses.
  
• To boost colonial income tourism is now available taking advantage of the planet's natural beauty and interstellar connectivity.
  
• Recent changes to colonial events allowing the player to spend resources on mitigating or boosting their effects also inspired new governmental programs.
  
• To help players recall gameplay rules and information, content sensitive on demand gameplay info buttons been added; that opens the relevant tutorial window for the screen the player currently is viewing.
  
• On the front of research, changes been made to the cost of technologies that now scale based of the number of technologies unlocked in their categories emphasising the need to plan the order in which you progress through the many tech trees of the game.
  
• The corvette class vessels also been modified to emphasise their nimble nature so when they are given a target, they move into a close quarter combat mode flying circles around their target.

My aspirations for the future are several upcoming updates with brand new content, like an auction house where the player bids for vessels with unique capabilities, wormholes to connect different regions of the universe, and Artefacts to be found, claimed then researched to unlock more and more bonuses.

If it peaks your interest grab a copy now while its 40% off and do not forget to let me know what you thought of it.

Chinese Empire: Prologue on Steam! ⛩🥳

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2296460/Chinese_Empire_Prologue - You can add to WISHLIST now!


Chinese Empire: Prologue's Steam page has just been launched! We'll be releasing a free prologue soon!

Check out our new gameplay trailer!

We have added new items in the Event Capsule Shop today! 
 
Get these items as soon as you can, they'll be available for a limited time only!
 
Sale Period: 

2023/06/28 00:00 ~ 07/11 23:59 (PDT)
















 


Capsule Item Preview:Yukata Green Outfit (M/F)



Funky Mouse (M/F)



Mecha Mask (M/F)

Soft Long Tail (M/F)



- FreeStyle 2 Team

fixed texture bug

• Cosmetic : Small display changes for tournament and court selection.
  
• Bug fix : Fixed visual glitch when automatic replay was launched during scoreboard animation.

The first F1® 23 patch (v1.05) is available to download.

Here are the changes that will be made with this patch:

• Fixed an issue where Two Player Career was incorrectly using equal performance instead of realistic performance
  
• Fixed an issue where Safety Car and Formation Lap were disabled in 25% short race distances
  
• Fixed an issue where players could be removed from Multiplayer lobbies when interacting with some system menus
  
• Fixed an issue where some players could experience FPS drops at night races
  
• Fixed an issue where cars would incorrectly collide when the setting 'Collisions off for first lap only' was enabled
  
• Fixed an issue where the game would crash with an additional career F2 save active
  
• Fixed an issue where finishing positions would be incorrect after a Red Flag
  
• Fixed an issue where TrueForce was not applied for Logitech wheels on Playstation and PC
  
• Fixed an issue where the car would hit a wall driving out of the 11th garage at Monaco causing damage
  
• Fixed an issue when an F1 World goal expires while a bonus goal is active resulting in an error message
  
• Corrected the 'Renault Driver Academy' to the 'Alpine Driver Academy' in Single Player Career
  
• Fixed an issue where, with certain settings enabled, the Virtual Rear View Mirror would be present when looking backwards
  
• Fixed an issue where sponsors decals would not appear on race suits and helmets in My Team
  
• Fixed an issue where players were getting stuck on the grid in Chapter 7 in Braking Point
  
• Fixed an issue where the strategy change after damage wouldn't appear on the Voice Command display
  
• General Stability Improvements
  
• Various Minor Fixes

The development team are continuing to hard at work making tweaks to the game based on feedback shared by the community. If you would like to track what issues/bugs are being prioritised based on this feedback, please check out the Community-Raised Issues thread on EA Answers. This thread will be updated periodically.

To keep up to date on the latest F1® 23 news and to be informed on the exact timing of the patch, be sure to follow the official Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube channels.

• Avalonia 11 nightly stability updates.
  
• Speed update makes the map editor perform 60-80x faster on OSX, and about 2x faster on Windows.
  
• More commands have help topics; help topics for UI has been fixed.

2017 was the year of the next revival of Virtual Reality. A huge number of different VR halls, playgrounds, VR attractions were opened all over the world. In November 2017, commissioned by the Gallery of Contemporary Art and Technology, the concept of a VR project based on Japanese urban legends was created. The name of the project was "Japan City's Legends". The project remained unrealized, but it was obvious that it had great potential.

In January 2018, a group of investors ordered the development of a virtual reality pavilion, which includes a package of five original VR games.



During this project, the concepts of four VR games were developed - action, underwater and space adventures, and historical slasher.



The fifth game was the VR horror “Keep Silent". It received the most attention.



In June 2018, the development of the game script was completed and a preliminary version of the game design document was created.

A fragment from the description of the game:

“The player finds himself in the role of a magical Guardian — a mystical entity that keeps order in a mysterious abandoned city. He protects the people lost in the city from the monsters inhabiting one and helps them get out of this terrible place.”

The story of saving a little girl from terrible monsters was worked out in sufficient detail, but the analysis of market trends and the forecast presented by the analysts of the investor company, which turned out to be quite correct, did not allow the project to move into the implementation stage.



3 years have passed.

Blockchain and NFT have captured the minds of ordinary people. Thanks to the appearance of Oculus Quest 2 in December 2020, the VR market has experienced its next revival. VR gaming projects have become relevant again and in March 2021, an offer for the implementation of the “Shtai Coory” project was made to an investment company. Name of the project can be translated from Japanese as “Corpses at retail”.



In the summer of the same year, in Hong Kong, the company “MAD DIVISION LIMITED” was registered and on December 21 work on a mobile VR prototype for the Oculus Quest 2 helmet was already completed. Also a package of game documentation was prepared for the subsequent transition to the production stage. But the market has made its own adjustments again…

Mark Zuckerberg's speech on October 28, 2021 with the announcement of the metaverse concept and all subsequent events in the technology and gaming markets forced a radical revision of the Project concept, which required several months of in-depth analysis of the situation and detailed forecasting of possible scenarios for the development of the situation in the gaming market.

Work on the project was resumed in March 2022. This time, it was decided to create a gaming product that carries essential prerequisites for further development in the form of a media franchise, which includes at the first stage a single-player game with possible PC and VR modes and in the future a multiplayer VR city as an independent product or part of a large metaverse. In the future, the project can transform into a multi-part streaming series or a feature length film.

The current task is a single-player horror adventure with action elements. It was decided to completely abandon the mobile version of the game. The concept of the project, its narrative and gameplay parts were redesigned. In addition to all this, the project has acquired a new name - “Morganica".



The developments of previous projects were used in the work on the Morganica, but the conceptual and narrative parts were completely changed.

Currently, work is underway on a demo version aimed at potential co-investors and the publisher. We are finishing on game documentation, negotiations are underway with potential candidates for the position of project manager, options for the subsequent organization of the production stage are being worked out.