Hello everyone, how have you been?

As you may know, I had to cancel Fairtravel Battle back in 2021 due to personal issues, but in the end I couldn't accept the way it ended, so I put those in the past and I'm back with a massive update!

In fact, this update is coming out the same day as Fairtravel's 6th anniversary. I've previously posted announcements on each birthday but I was actually wrong about the date, as I've started working on Fairtravel on July 22nd rather than September 24th, which was when I posted my first devlog.

Finally, I'm again working alone on this game, with the exception of commissioning art every now and then. I think speaking in first person will work better from now on.


This update remakes a large portion of the game. Here's the condensed change list:

• Remade base set with 135 cards with an improved card frame design
  
• Removed classes and introduced brand new unique resource system
  
• Redesigned mechanics
  
• Added new 4-player Raid game mode, where you can play as a raider or a raid boss
  
• Steam P2P Networking alongside improved multiplayer
  
• Many UX improvements, bug fixes
  
• Much more!

I was unhappy with the current state of the game (in fact, it was a major reason to return to it). Although the game was functional, it had a lot of bugs, the cards felt ugly and blurry to look at, and there were a lot of issues overall.

As a result, I decided to redesign the base set, but I also felt that I'd need too many cards to make it work (there used to be almost 300 cards in the latest version before this).

As part of the personal reasons that caused me to quit, I wanted the work on the new set to be doable for a single person.

As a result, I removed the classes/factions that were in the game, and I thought of making something with maximum deckbuilding potential: Don't get things stuck to a specific class or faction, so that players can do a lot with a small amount of cards.

I tried 60 cards, but it felt too limited in deckbuilding potential. I could have simplified the game by removing card types, but I thought it was going to impact the game negatively. Over time, the amount of cards grew to 135, and so far has stayed more or less that amount.

Here's some of the cards in the game:









Overall I think the cards feel and look much better now.


As I mentioned just now, due to development capacity I ended up deciding to cut out classes, but I needed a way to give meaningful deckbuilding to the game.

As a result, I designed a new unique resource system that is at the same time familiar, yet refreshing.

If you've ever played a certain trading card game, one of the most frustrating parts of that game is needing lands to have colored mana.

Lands usually use up ~40% of a deck, and drawing too much or too little is a problem that regularly happens. It can keep you from playing the game, which is quite unfun.

Fairtravel uses an essence system, which is similar to colors, but rather than using lands, any card can be returned to the bottom of the deck to increase your maximum mana and pick an essence to level up.

What this means is, you can use as many different essences as you want, but cards will require a specific set and amount of essences to be played, alongside mana to play those cards.

Unlike typical color-based systems though, there's no colored mana in Fairtravel: Instead, essences are never spent, you can only gain them and they're like a level requirement in an RPG.

In simpler terms, let's say you have 4 mana and 1 passion (red color) essence, and you have 4 cards that each cost 1 red mana.

In typical games, you'd only be able to play one of these, because you only have one passion, but in Fairtravel you could play all four, because that color isn't spent.

I think this significantly improves the game and reduces friction with each match, but Invite you all to give it a try and share feedback!


Several mechanics in Fairtravel have been changed considerably:

• Equipment are now generally called Artifacts since they might not be specifically character equipment
  
• Permanent Abilities are now called Enchantments, as I felt that the original name felt too clunky.
  
• Abilities are now called Spells, for the same reasons as Permanent Abilities.
  
• Standard Heroes no longer have effects, and are more or less just a skin.
  
• The Set and Quest zones now have a limit of 8 cards. If you want to play another (set zone), you can choose an existing card there to destroy to place the new one.
  
• Fields are limited to 6 follower cards, and if you need to play another you can choose an existing card there to destroy to place the new one.
  
• Soaring is now called Flying and has a different effect: A flying card can't be attacked or defended against by non-Flying cards.
  
• Tactician has been changed to be active while you control non-tactician followers. Meaning the best way to get rid of a tactician is getting rid of their underlings first.
  
• Drawing from an empty deck causes an instant defeat for that player. This was changed to make the matches more compact.
  
• Duel and Raid Decks are now 50 cards (down from 60) and Sealed/Draft decks are now 30 cards (down from 40).
  
• Weapons no longer have a swing cost.

I believe these changes improve the game experience overall, and I'd love to hear what you think!


Part of the future plans for Fairtravel is to have more ways of playing than just dueling, and one of the biggest steps is adding the new Raid mode.

This raid mode currently only has one scenario, the Red Dragon boss. This boss has three phases and a custom deck.

For modes such as raid mode, you can add CPU partners, so you don't have to have a big group just to try it!




Part of the work done in this update includes a new work-in-progress steam peer-to-peer networking system.

This means that, using Steam, you'll be able to connect to other players without needing the official game server.

So, if the game servers happen to be discontinued for some reason, you'll be able to keep playing together, be it on Steam, your own server hosting using the Lan multiplayer feature, or playing offline. That's something very important to me: I want to ensure this game outlasts its support.

Additionally, game performance and multiplayer networking has been vastly improved: You should have much less problems than before, with almost no desyncs if at all.


Seriously, so much has changed since 2021 it's crazy. According to my source control service (which is where I keep track of what changes in the game's code), the code for this version specifically had over 730 commits (sets of changes, usually multiple files), which is a huge amount of work for someone working solo.

Many, many bugs were fixed, user experiences were improved quite a lot, a lot of frustration points were also taken care of, and overall the game feels great! If you tried it before and weren't happy with it, please give it another chance, it might change your mind!


There's a lot of changes happening in the future.

For one thing, I've been getting a trickle of new card arts custom-made for Fairtravel, and over the coming months most of the card arts will be replaced as a result, making the game look so much better. (You can see some examples in the earlier sections of this post)

There's also a lack of polish, animations, sounds, effects, that I want to fix.

I want to add more content for players to enjoy as well, and I hope to bring something truly wonderful for you guys!

The game won't be released on Steam just yet, but you can still play it through the Steam Playtest in between. There's a lot of challenges ahead, but I'll do my best to make a great game for you!

I want to take this time to thank everyone who has supported me throughout this journey. I wouldn't be able to go this far without you. And I truly hope that the future stays bright for Fairtravel Battle!

Thank you for reading this lengthy post, I know it was a lot, and I hope you have fun above all else!

• Fixed a game breaking bug, where the player wouldn't be able to pause, or continue to the next day
  
  
  0.1.5 Patch Notes :
  Bug Fixes :
• Fixed a bug where upon purchasing cheese danishes, the boxes would instead be for donuts

Hello everyone, how have you been?

As you may know, I had to cancel Fairtravel Battle back in 2021 due to personal issues, but in the end I couldn't accept the way it ended, so I put those in the past and I'm back with a massive update!

In fact, this update is coming out the same day as Fairtravel's 6th anniversary. I've previously posted announcements on each birthday but I was actually wrong about the date, as I've started working on Fairtravel on July 22nd rather than September 24th, which was when I posted my first devlog.

Finally, I'm again working alone on this game, with the exception of commissioning art every now and then. I think speaking in first person will work better from now on.


This update remakes a large portion of the game. Here's the condensed change list:

• Remade base set with 135 cards with an improved card frame design
  
• Removed classes and introduced brand new unique resource system
  
• Redesigned mechanics
  
• Added new 4-player Raid game mode, where you can play as a raider or a raid boss
  
• Steam P2P Networking alongside improved multiplayer
  
• Many UX improvements, bug fixes
  
• Much more!

I was unhappy with the current state of the game (in fact, it was a major reason to return to it). Although the game was functional, it had a lot of bugs, the cards felt ugly and blurry to look at, and there were a lot of issues overall.

As a result, I decided to redesign the base set, but I also felt that I'd need too many cards to make it work (there used to be almost 300 cards in the latest version before this).

As part of the personal reasons that caused me to quit, I wanted the work on the new set to be doable for a single person.

As a result, I removed the classes/factions that were in the game, and I thought of making something with maximum deckbuilding potential: Don't get things stuck to a specific class or faction, so that players can do a lot with a small amount of cards.

I tried 60 cards, but it felt too limited in deckbuilding potential. I could have simplified the game by removing card types, but I thought it was going to impact the game negatively. Over time, the amount of cards grew to 135, and so far has stayed more or less that amount.

Here's some of the cards in the game:









Overall I think the cards feel and look much better now.


As I mentioned just now, due to development capacity I ended up deciding to cut out classes, but I needed a way to give meaningful deckbuilding to the game.

As a result, I designed a new unique resource system that is at the same time familiar, yet refreshing.

If you've ever played a certain trading card game, one of the most frustrating parts of that game is needing lands to have colored mana.

Lands usually use up ~40% of a deck, and drawing too much or too little is a problem that regularly happens. It can keep you from playing the game, which is quite unfun.

Fairtravel uses an essence system, which is similar to colors, but rather than using lands, any card can be returned to the bottom of the deck to increase your maximum mana and pick an essence to level up.

What this means is, you can use as many different essences as you want, but cards will require a specific set and amount of essences to be played, alongside mana to play those cards.

Unlike typical color-based systems though, there's no colored mana in Fairtravel: Instead, essences are never spent, you can only gain them and they're like a level requirement in an RPG.

In simpler terms, let's say you have 4 mana and 1 passion (red color) essence, and you have 4 cards that each cost 1 red mana.

In typical games, you'd only be able to play one of these, because you only have one passion, but in Fairtravel you could play all four, because that color isn't spent.

I think this significantly improves the game and reduces friction with each match, but Invite you all to give it a try and share feedback!


Several mechanics in Fairtravel have been changed considerably:

• Equipment are now generally called Artifacts since they might not be specifically character equipment
  
• Permanent Abilities are now called Enchantments, as I felt that the original name felt too clunky.
  
• Abilities are now called Spells, for the same reasons as Permanent Abilities.
  
• Standard Heroes no longer have effects, and are more or less just a skin.
  
• The Set and Quest zones now have a limit of 8 cards. If you want to play another (set zone), you can choose an existing card there to destroy to place the new one.
  
• Fields are limited to 6 follower cards, and if you need to play another you can choose an existing card there to destroy to place the new one.
  
• Soaring is now called Flying and has a different effect: A flying card can't be attacked or defended against by non-Flying cards.
  
• Tactician has been changed to be active while you control non-tactician followers. Meaning the best way to get rid of a tactician is getting rid of their underlings first.
  
• Drawing from an empty deck causes an instant defeat for that player. This was changed to make the matches more compact.
  
• Duel and Raid Decks are now 50 cards (down from 60) and Sealed/Draft decks are now 30 cards (down from 40).
  
• Weapons no longer have a swing cost.

I believe these changes improve the game experience overall, and I'd love to hear what you think!


Part of the future plans for Fairtravel is to have more ways of playing than just dueling, and one of the biggest steps is adding the new Raid mode.

This raid mode currently only has one scenario, the Red Dragon boss. This boss has three phases and a custom deck.

For modes such as raid mode, you can add CPU partners, so you don't have to have a big group just to try it!




Part of the work done in this update includes a new work-in-progress steam peer-to-peer networking system.

This means that, using Steam, you'll be able to connect to other players without needing the official game server.

So, if the game servers happen to be discontinued for some reason, you'll be able to keep playing together, be it on Steam, your own server hosting using the Lan multiplayer feature, or playing offline. That's something very important to me: I want to ensure this game outlasts its support.

Additionally, game performance and multiplayer networking has been vastly improved: You should have much less problems than before, with almost no desyncs if at all.


Seriously, so much has changed since 2021 it's crazy. According to my source control service (which is where I keep track of what changes in the game's code), the code for this version specifically had over 730 commits (sets of changes, usually multiple files), which is a huge amount of work for someone working solo.

Many, many bugs were fixed, user experiences were improved quite a lot, a lot of frustration points were also taken care of, and overall the game feels great! If you tried it before and weren't happy with it, please give it another chance, it might change your mind!


There's a lot of changes happening in the future.

For one thing, I've been getting a trickle of new card arts custom-made for Fairtravel, and over the coming months most of the card arts will be replaced as a result, making the game look so much better. (You can see some examples in the earlier sections of this post)

There's also a lack of polish, animations, sounds, effects, that I want to fix.

I want to add more content for players to enjoy as well, and I hope to bring something truly wonderful for you guys!

The game won't be released on Steam just yet, but you can still play it through the Steam Playtest in between. There's a lot of challenges ahead, but I'll do my best to make a great game for you!

I want to take this time to thank everyone who has supported me throughout this journey. I wouldn't be able to go this far without you. And I truly hope that the future stays bright for Fairtravel Battle!

Thank you for reading this lengthy post, I know it was a lot, and I hope you have fun above all else!

There's too many changes in this update, please check the Announcement for 22 July 2023!

The past week since release has been a whirlwind! One thing that we never expected was how much interactivity the game is bringing to content creators and their chat! You guys love to help guess!

We have invited el3v8or to join us for a community playthrough of Goosey Guess. El3v8or was the first player to top our leaderboards in "Goosey" mode. He runs his own channel over on twitch https://www.twitch.tv/el3v8orwhere you can join him in various playthroughs. Please be sure to head on over to his channel, give him a follow and subscribe to his channel.

You can join in on the fun and win your very own copy of Goosey Guess by helping el3v8or guess and work his way up the leaderboards! Hop on into chat and enter your guesses to win a key!.

I've released a small-ish update in publicbeta, this one has a few different fixes for vehicle physics, crashing into things and driving vehicles in online co-op, some general fixes for crashes etc, and updated translations. As I mentioned I would in the original vehicles patch, I've now reinstated sunflowers which you can use to make sunflower oil, and I've changed a few of the larger vehicles to take diesel instead of gasoline, for which you can substitute sunflower oil. Because I like it when items have multiple uses, I've introduce the concept of "frying" with the frying pan. It works similar to boiling in the pot, you can fry ears of corn or eggs (which is better for morale but worse for constitution than boiling them) and you can make omelets. Sunflower seeds are a bit rare and the AI communities won't grow them, but you should be able to find them here in there, especially in gardening stores or I would expect traders to carry them.

• Reinstated sunflowers, which you can use to grow sunflower seeds and make sunflower oil, which you can use as fuel for diesel vehicles or to make fried eggs/corn/omelettes using the frying pan
  
• Updated French, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian translations
  
• Increased some font sizes
  
• Some fixes for vehicle physics
  
• Fixes for answers to Who's in charge here?
  
• Fix for Organizers who are building multiple fences returning all their resources to a building between each fence post
  
• Fix for communities having no name when they take over an empty base
  
• Fix for crash sometimes when vehicles go outside map bounds
  
• Fix for occasional crash when driving vehicles in co-op
  
• Fix for occasional crash when surrendering

v189 will be in the "publicbeta" branch for a while, before pushing it to the main game. If you want to try the latest features as they come out (and help test them!) it's a good idea to start using this branch. But keep in mind:

• Because it's the bleeding edge it could be less stable
  
• If you want to be able to play online co-op with someone you'll need to be on the same version as them
  
• If you go back from the "publicbeta" branch to the main branch you may not be able to load savegames created on "publicbeta".

To use publicbeta, just right-click on Survivalist: Invisible Strain in your Steam library and go to Properties, then Betas and in the drop-down select "publicbeta".

Hello

In this little update, We change the keyboard shortcut for the Quit option from (Ctrl+Q) to (Alt+F4)

Since we have (Ctrl+W) to close the interaction pages (Instead of clicking on the OK button)
Some users may press (Ctrl+Q) instead of (Ctrl+W) by mistake
And this will lead to closing the PWCT2 environment
When this happens, The user think this is a CRASH!
So we decided to avoided the (Ctrl+Q) keyboard shortcut and use the common (Alt+F4) instead of it.

Thanks!

A variant for the walls and roofs textures for one of the habitational maps, there are now more visual variation in the buildings of such map.

Hear the voice of intelligence and reason:

Where Hollywood loses, Steam wins! WOOOO! Indie devs rejoice! Gamers rejoice! Movies and tv was an inferior form of entertainment that's dying off anyway! WOOOO! More people get to throw away their television and pick up a gaming controller on Steam! This is great for society for it means less brainwashing of the masses and more indie expression not controlled by censorship.


It's great to exit the times of censorship and entering into an age of enlightenment. :)

Competition baby, if someone will not provide a service, the competing good wins out!

And when the competing good wins out, people get upset who are losing!

Remember the people who sold buggy whips for horses got mad when cars got invented? They threw a fit. Remember when painters who'd be set for life by a king simply by painting one picture of the king in their life? They got upset when the camera was made and took away their jobs.

[/url[url]
Every invention takes away jobs. We've talked about this since the rope and pully took away a worker... Well he works someplace else and everyone's money buys more because mankind is making more. To do the opposite and have 1000 people work at a small fast food restaurant makes no sense. It makes no sense to cancel an oil pipeline for environmental reasons so you can make sure thousands of truckers spew diesel fuel. You have to watch out for political lies like this.


These lies are attacking Steam when Steam/Valve literally are making money hand over fist! They're lying about Steam in order to... Get this, "Hope Steam makes the wrong financial decision." Steam should just do business as normal and keep watching their competition give up. Why sabotage one's own ship because everyone on sinking ships are tired of losing a sea battle? No, Steam, keep on winning, don't change course.[url]

In China, they respect NO Intellectual Property. Us honest Indies are competing with China companies who literally steal everyone else's characters from comic books, to movies to children's cartoons, shamelessly even keeping their copyrighted names.

In AAA video game studios, they've manually done Stable Diffusion for decades. They'd take art from another game, then subtly change it in paint programs. This is industry standard to steal others art and change it. It was just more expensive and the indies have the playing field leveled finally.

Even original retro games stole their cover art directly from block buster American movies. You know the examples, 8 bit consoles and our biggest movies had scenes just redrawn for covers.




All the big players have always done what indies can finally do with AI art. Nothing has changed, except the big fat cats aren't the only ones with tools anymore... And this is standard in any industry... The more time goes by, the more tools the public has. If you go far enough in history, even paper to write on was a rare commodity that only kings could afford. In the future, people will probably make MMORPGS and Platformers out of the box with an AI prompt or manually in makers. I know one of my next projects will be PencilVania, a Platformer maker and I'll attempt to make After Juliet(Romeo in the Underworld) to be a masterpiece in it... There's more and more tools coming to developers and even unskilled players who might become a dev when more tools are available to them.

Scares and misinformation are common for humanity. Nuclear Energy is the cleanest and most safe form of energy so all of the other energy companies give it bad misinformation PR. They say Nuclear Enenergy will pollute the environment with invisible killers... Do you know the environment already has invisible killers? The 2nd leading cause of lung cancer is radon gas (radioactive gas normally found in old mining territories like Pennsylvannia, West Virginia, etc). If we had more nuclear physicists and power plants, we could clean up the naturally occuring invisible killers already here! Even worse than that, Fossil Fuel pollution retards nearly every living human being's IQ. Fossil Fuel pollution kills tens of thousands each year. Nuclear kills on average 10 and this is factoring in irresponsible Chernobyl.



M


>oral of the story? Scares and misinformation can ruin society, kill people and have you live in an age of lies where culture is messed up. Don't fall for it. AI art is just another invention, and every invention there are winners and losers. The Hollywood strike is a joke though since no one really likes movies/tv anymore. Most people are video gamers. The Hollywood strike is laughable because it only benefits Steam and indie devs. The cancel culturists have their roots in all of Big Tech except Steam, censoring Christians and other groups. I'm really hoping Steam stands for the rights of Christians and the little dev by not bowing before authoritarian powers we should all rally cry against. The more we rally cry against the authoritarians, the more we lame duck evil dictators, and less wars happen... This is very important during this age when we're in WW3 or teetering on the brink depending on who you ask... Hollywood, well they haven't been freedom or human rights since the 90s, they're just part of the problem. Valve's the only hero in all of this. For the sake of your own wallet, kids in hospitals getting toys, for the sake of little indies, for the sake of peace at the world at large, don't ban indies ability to use fuzzed art when the big players do it. China doesn't even fuzz it, they just use copyrighted characters directly. How is an indie supposed to make games when the corporations and nations are allowed to do things an indie is not? This is literally the battle for freedom and human rights on Earth... Valve will make the right deicsion, Gabe knows.





As for Starfighter General, the first MMO starpost is coming:
Led11-Cheynne Starway, a mining town who collects mass driven asteroids from the belt to Earth... Since Earth is mostly destroyed no one cares if a couple miss and hit Earth, this helps their profit.

Literally, no protest intended This patch added 700,000 pieces of 2d AI art that I spent over a thousand hours to make. If I cannot use 2d AI art on Steam, I'll have to sell this game on another platform. Steam has to pick a side, either Hollywood which Steam benefits nothing from, or with it's own indies who make games and Steam profits from. If AI art gets banned on Steam. I will still use AI art until this is enforced. When I am banned on Steam, I will make video games with no platform, just www.starfightergeneral.com No protest intended, but if Steam sides with it's competitors and wants us indies to be banned from making games, well Steam has chosen to hurt its own wallet and hurt the little guy... I wouldn't be surprised, I've been criminally ripped off by all the other big tech for way over a million dollars, in fact all of other big tech has not treated me fairly once... So if Steam/Valve ends up being just another bad guy, no surprises, the system has been entirely unfair to me... Check out @starfightergen on Twitter my social media, the pinned tweet, I may get ripped off more than just about any other software engineer on Earth. If Valve turns evil and bans AI art, and kicks indie devs off their site because their competiton asked nicely for Valve to self destruct, I wouldn't be surpried... I'm cynical... But I put it into clear and consise words why it is in Steam/Valve's best interest, a no brainer in fact to keep AI art. Valve's choosing: Keep our developers and indies happy, or make our floundering competition happy. It's a no brainer, but I'm also cynical in my 40s.




,James W. Sager III

One of the extremely rare: IQ so high, doesn't get a number, not many of us... You may not even know we exist, we're this rare.

#1 world gamer Starcraft/Diablo2 Hardcore/Warcraft3/C&C3/SC2 2v2 and more. Many people know me as the best video gamer who ever lived.

Those games are more intellectually demanding than chess so I confirmed my IQ examiners right.

Some countries will put their most intelligent people in charge of the nation.

In the USA, when you're super smart and honest, that's a bad combination for the corrupt system.

So whether you continue to play Starfighter General on Steam or we get deplatformed and we finish the journey on an independent store... Just be happy to be hitchiking along with a guy of vast intelligence and honesty who wants to make the world a brighter, and more fun place...























The destiny of Straighter General is not in my hands. This may be good bye for good on Steam if they make the dum dum decision. Find me on www.starfightergeneral.com I'll find a way to self publish if Valve chooses self destruction business seuppuko moves.

Steam, if you ban AI art, you ban your indies in favor of the big players who already do this and worse violations. To be honest if you're forced to make a choice, look who's forcing you to make a choice? It ain't us indies... You'd just be forcing us to leave if you banned the same art technique that the big players have used since the 80s...

Do I get to stay on Steam or you kicking me off? I kinda liked you guys.

• Disable Player R.T.S to command friendlies to target Spawner in Invasion Mode, to prevent mission stuck bug