Hey everyone! It's been a bit!

We've been super busy here working on lots of exciting things! We have two levels in the works that are close to done and we have been investing a ton of resources into our infrastructure to help accelerate development by a significant margin. So where are the updates?
For this next update, we want it to be a big one. Unfortunately, that's going to mean holding back some content for a bit. We hope this next update changes the way the game is played significantly. So for a little teaser, here are some planned features that will make their way into this next update:

• Multiple New Levels
  
• Inventory/Sanity System
  
• Branching Paths
  
• Revamps to Old Levels
  
• Various Quality of Life Improvements

As a final note, we have never released an update as big as the one we are planning to release and will need to expand our internal testing so the update does come out as a buggy, boring mess. That being said, I wanted to announce our new volunteer playtester job openings. If you have experience in QA, or are just passionate about BET and want to work with the core team, please fill out an application here!

This update will take multiple weeks until it's complete but we promise it will be well worth the wait, here are some teaser images to hold you all over!

Edit 7/7/2023: MAC version is up!

Hey all!

I noticed the triple kill badge in the badges menu had a UI that was accidentally left on, and someone asked for a no-nuke option in survival, so I quickly made the change and the fix.

No nuke code: nonuke

Thanks for all your support!

-Raulboy

Reduced the wait times once the loading screen appears from 1 minute and 30 seconds down to approximately 57 seconds!

-Fixed a non fatal error that can occur when jumping from certain horror events.
-Lowered significantly the chance to have a drone vanish when force jumping.
-Added more messaging around coordinates in Chapter 2 and 3.
-Tweaked random number generation for coordinates to be less punishing in chapter 2 and 3.
-Fixed text being restricted to the left side of the communications window.

Hello folks! Its been almost a full month now since the last Dev Diary -- I was so caught up in work I didn’t manage to step aside and get you all updated, sorry about that! I’m here now to give a full run down on where things are currently at.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1135810/Vault_of_the_Void/

For those new here, I'm currently in the middle of doing a full rewrite of the game code to support future content expansions, and most importantly, exporting to Mobile and Switch in the future. Today I'm giving another update on how things are progressing on that front :)

Alright let's dive in!

Sanjeev the Animation Wizard has been hard at work just crushing out all the Monster Animations for the game, and converting them over. As of right now, all Monsters have been re-animated with both the condensed and expanded frame style, ready to be imported into the game! Export and re-import of all these is slated for later this week. A huge task and another exciting milestone.



Shu has wrapped up the Instability screen and got it working very smoothly. The screen now also has been setup with pagination for smaller screens, (ignore my Max Instability here, we’ve been testing the unlocks there as well!)



Shu has now moved over to getting the Events queued up and working. To start with, work has begun on the black screen, full image style events (Matron of Memories, Shrine, Ravens Gift etc).

So far, completed are :

• Matron of Memories
  
• Ravens Gift
  
• Shrine
  
• Dark Idol
  
• Treasure Room
  
• Aftertifact Treasure Room

We have a meeting today to sweep over these and finalize the art/particles and get them squared away 100%. They also support 2 page styles for smaller screens (Mobile and Switch!) due to a lot of the text being quite long. Really happy with progress here, and we should be moving onto the rest of the rooms next!

This is one I’ve been putting off for some time, due to how ominous the task was. But I kicked myself into gear and have been progressing very nicely so far. The Battle screen is where you spend about 80% of your time, and I’m very particular about getting things right. This is not only an opportunity to fully optimise the system, but also to ensure that gameplay on Mobile and small screens is smooth and enjoyable, and doesn’t feel like a hacky port.

I started with the State Machine and rewrote that to be more robust and stable than the previous. I also defined a few more states to clarify things like “Start of Turn” and “Start of Players Turn” etc to help clearly define when things happen, at least in the code! I then started with “At the start of your turn” stuff, known internally as “Player Upkeep”. There were a huge amount of artifacts, abilities and effects to move over here, and that is now all setup correctly and working. Once I was able to progress through a turn, it was time to add the Enemies!

Migrating the Enemy code was a long job of copy and pasting and moving scripts over, but it also gave me a chance to audit their State Machine, and clear up a lot of stuff. Previously things like Bleed, Future Strike, Shii checks etc were all looped into the one state, so I was able to split that out for easier processing and triggering. As of right now, I have fully migrated over the Enemies, they now spawn, respawn, select their actions as they should, perform their actions as they should, and die like they (hopefully) should. Once I import over all the new animations, these should 100% be sorted!

So now -- it's onto probably the biggest component to a card game... the cards! I’ve got these all setup in deck viewer and external to battle, however it's now time to migrate over cards which are intractable and playable! I’ll be getting started with that later this week, and will have more to share in the next Dev Blog!

I wanted to take some time here to talk about pricing on other platforms. Although this post's goal is to update everyone on the Steam version, I did want to mention this briefly here. Firstly, I’ll admit I’m very new to this space so originally when I announced other platforms, I went with my gut. However, I’ve had some time now to talk with some other developers who have been super generous with their time, and learnt a bit more about the mobile market. So here is where I need to backtrack a little on what I said, and I’m really sorry about this. Originally I was going to have Vault priced on mobile as Free, with paid unlocks for the 3 later classes (Hidden would be unlocked automatically).

After learning a bit more about the mobile market, and the nature of “Free” games, I decided it’s really not the space where I want Vault to play in. I want to offer a fair priced product, with one off purchase unlocks, rather than try to compete with loot crates and predatory purchase models. For this reason, I’ve decided to move Vault of the Void to a single price upfront purchase on Mobile, which will have all content unlocked. At the end of the day, the price for the end user will be the same, but I really do apologize to anyone who was waiting hoping for a free upfront version of the game.

---

Okay -- that's all from me here! I thank you all so much for your patience. It's so painful to not be able to provide you all with new content for so long, but I promise lots of awesome new stuff to come as soon as this is done. Both Shu and I are optimistic about getting a PC Beta out on Steam in the next 4-6 weeks or so, which will run on an opt-in branch whilst we finalize controller implementation and small screen displays. From there, I’ll provide details on other Betas!

Thank you everyone for all your support! I’ll be back in 2 weeks with more good news!

All for now.
- Josh

Welcome back, devoted wishlisters. Thank you for taking part on this journey with me. Today we will cover a truly groundbreaking topic. The ground. Sorry for the pun.

Most games that take place in outdoor landscapes use something called a Terrain System. It's a way to describe and create the landscape in the level. I've been using a low-poly terrain system since the prototype days of my game, but I'm ready to build more levels and I needed to explore my options.

The weeks after GDC I went fully down a terrain rabbithole and evaluated all the major options inside of Unity. After a couple weeks of this, I was a bit frazzled.


The Gang Picks a Terrain System


In most games, the "ground" is not created the same way buildings or objects are. Rather than creating it in a 3d tool, like Blender, it's created in Unity, by using a terrain tool.

Most of these terrain tools use what's called a Height Map- an image where each pixel color (or brightness) represents height. So you can use a 2d image to form a 3d landscape. There are often tools to sculpt the terrain inside Unity, so you can quickly make changes when you're designing your levels.

With most of these you can actually "draw" onto the terrain. By drawing on the heightmap, you're raising and lowering the terrain.



You can also apply "stamps" to the heightmap, which is helpful for laying down standard mountains or valleys.



But again, the heightmaps are represented by images. For example, this one is a heightmap stamp of a mountain ridge.



There are tons of terrain systems you can use in Unity. Here are the assets I evaluated:

• Unity Terrain (the built in system). Overall okay but low on features and not very performant
  
• Polaris Low-Poly Terrain - a low poly specific terrain asset, faster performance in-game.
  
• Gaia - A fully featured terrain system for big worlds and realistic terrain
  
• Microsplat / Microverse - A better shader and generator for terrain.

What do I actually want from a Terrain System? My requirements are:

• Has a Low-Poly workflow, in order to fit the style of the game
  
• Fast performance in-game.
  
• Options for procedurally generating terrain in the editor (not in-game)
  
• Procedural placement of vegetation
  
• Level design tools- able to flatten terrain and place prefabs, roads, etc.

After exploring my options I decided to stick with the Polaris low-poly terrain, since they recently released some level generation features.

Since we're using a heightmap image to create the terrain, our procedural generation system must create some kind of an image as well. To do this, we link together nodes that either create or modify the terrain heightmap in some way.

To start with a simple example, here is what happens when we take two sources of "noise" and combine them to form a bumpy ground.



After playing with this for a bit, I realized I should put a helicopter on the terrain, put some enemies, and actually play on it. This sounds so simple and dumb but it immediately made a few things clear:

1. Rolling terrain sucks because an isometric camera doesn't show depth well.
   
2. It's had to land on areas that aren't flat.
   
3. NPCs and vehicles need to traverse the map and complicated features make that hard.
   
4. You can't actually see any mountains in the distance because of the isometric view (duh).
   
5. When enemy trucks and cars launch off hills it's really cool.

Given this, I realized the most "fun" terrain is one that is:

1. Is really clearly either flat or not flat.
   
2. The height changes happen at discrete intervals so you know if you can fly over them or not
   
3. If height changes are "rampy" then cars will fly off them and npcs can still walk up them.

Now that I had some goals, I started building out a node graph that would generate our ideal terrain.


The resulting node graph.


Each major step of procedural generation.

Add in some vegetation...

The final product, with texturing based on slope.

Does it feel right when you're shooting stuff?



Yes.

As always, thank you all for your support! I can't wait to share more of what we've been working on. Stay tuned!

If you want to keep up to date, join the email list: https://clearedhotgame.com/email-list/

Hello Onward Community,

We are happy to hear so many of you are enjoying all the new features that have come with Update 1.11. We also understand that when Update 1.11 launched there were some unintended behaviors that happened as well. Thank you to everyone who took the time to submit reports and provided images/videos to help give us details to quickly understand some of the bugs you were experiencing. We were able to quickly look into some of these and got to work right away on some high priority fixes. Details about all bugs fixed are in the change log.

Additionally, we wanted to also go over some game settings that might help with some of the newer changes that have been added to the game.

Height Setting & Movement
Player height setting plays an important role in how your character moves. We have improved our system settings to more accurately gauge your real life height. A warning will be issued and the screen will go black if your height setting does not match your actual height. You will not be able to play with modified/inaccurate height settings.

If you feel like your character is unable to sprint please try the following troubleshooting methods:
Check your Playspace Guardian to make sure accurate floor height is set

1. Make sure your height is set correctly
   
2. Verify your correct/preferred method for sprinting is set (Single click or Outer Edge might be a better setting for some players)
   
3. Take note of if your weapon is pointing up/down fully or if it is slightly drawn when moving

Gunstock Calibration
At the moment, Gunstock Calibration does not correctly support the "Lowered" pivot setting. We will resolve this in the future, but for now we have added an in-game warning when players try to use it. Currently, you should set your Weapon Pivot Setting to the default and this should help with being able to use this feature again.

Change Log:

• Increased maximum player height from 6"4 to 6"8
  
• Further improvements made to watch design, including new watch textures
  
• Improved height exploit checks
  
• Fixed issue with players being able to sprint while in stances other than standing
  
• Weapons now line up properly with your eyes when aiming down sights for other players
  
• Fixed an exploit that allowed players to become invincible to one other player
  
• Fixed an issue with the refresh button getting stuck on in map votes
  
• Fixed One in the Chamber always choosing iron sights for the random weapon setting
  
• The tent countdown is now canceled in the event of a host transfer
  
• Fixed a possible source of player models freezing in place
  
• Fixed issue with drawing board not dragging properly with some controllers when playing on SteamVR
  
• Fixes for various collision issues in Suburbia, Snowpeak, Turbine, and Subway that allowed players to exploit
  
• Fixed an area in Subway that allowed you to see through walls
  
• Added an in-game warning for using the "Lowered" pivot setting in the settings menu in combination with gunstock calibration

Known Issues:

• Gunstock Calibration "Lowered" pivot setting not working correctly
  
• On PC, the tent in Downfall is brighter than it should be

Chaírete, hoplites!

Today we prepared even more information about what enemies await you in Second Chapter, a new tower and war techniques to further improve your towers.

Let’s start…


In legends Triton was a son of the Poseidon and Amphitrite - gods of the sea. But, at some time during the Greek and Roman era, his name became nominal for merman and mermaids.

You can see that our mermen are pretty scary and seeing one would send an unprepared peasant flee, while mermaids are as beautiful as they are deadly.

These are only 5 types of mermen and mermaids that you can face on the battlefield and some of their skills might surprise you. For example, a shieldbearer can throw a shield which will bounce between your towers, while a mermaid with staff will apply a debuff that reduces attack speed and movement speed.


While the Ancient Greek language doesn’t have a word for a witch, it is still a recognizable image. Maybe she can be better described as “pharmakis” - someone who gives out medicine, and “aoidos” - enchantress, because one of the main abilities of this tower is that it can both heal allies and damage enemies.

Witch can focus on either being a support tower - which will improve healing output and add debuff to her spell list - or a summoner and summon all kinds of…aid.


War techniques allow you to further improve and fine-tune your towers. Let’s see three examples:
Moonlight arrow for Archers: if there are enough enemies on the same lane with Archer, Archer will fire an arrow that pierces all enemies and deals a percentage of their current HP.
Ares’s Spirit for Stone Walls: stone wall buffs Attack Speed of every unit behind it in the same row. This effect doesn’t stack.
Apollo’s Gift for Musicians: musical notes now deal google damage, but they also affect allies.

There will be a lot of different war techs and some will even change the playstyle of towers!

And this is it for this devlog. There is more to come. See you around!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1479810/Legendary_Hoplite

About Legendary Hoplite:
A combination of Action RPG and Tower Defense: slay monsters, find weapons, upgrade your armies, defend your base… Prevent humanity from extinction at the hands of monsters from Greek mythology and ancient tribes. Don't let them cross the gate, commander!

Follow Legendary Hoplite on our social networks to be the first to lead a young captain, Dio into battle against hordes of mythical monsters!

► Twitter
► Facebook
► Discord
► Instagram

The table of contents and links found throughout the manual were broken. This has now been fixed.

Enjoy our discounts!

* Sorry for reposting it, Valve's bots are deleting my announcements. Plus, I will not be able to do the giveaway for now, because Valve's bots are deleting that too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯