Jul 26, 2023

Airborne Empire - Ben Wander

Hey all! Consider this the first Steam devlog update. I'll do these at least weekly, so keep tabs on Steam or on our Discord if you'd like to know more!

For now, I want to start by telling you about our team. Some members are here from Airborne Kingdom, but we have a few new faces too, and some of our roles have also changed! Consider this a wave hello from all of us!

I'll begin with myself. Last game, I did a lot of the design and all of the writing, as well as standing up the UI code. On this project, I've shifted roles a lot. I'm now doing all the tech art and rendering engineering, specifically around tweaking our rendering pipeline, writing custom shaders, creating our Visual Effects, and optimizing our GPU. I'm also wholly owning the UX Design and UI Implementation, which includes our new Dialogue tech. These are areas I have a lot of interest in, and I've learned quite a lot from working on our console ports -- enough that I know this is a full job for our follow-up! But then, who's designing the game...?

Much like the last game, it's ultimately a collaboration, but our captain for this voyage is Zach Mumbach. Last game he was our Producer and did a lot of the level design and world building, and much of our early QA. He's now picking up the big Systems Design mantle, and working out how our systems integrate and evolve with our new mechanics. Zach was so passionate about making this follow-up that it was hard to imagine another person helming the project. He has so many good ideas on mechanics and story, and it's exciting to see all of them getting implemented and written. Implemented by...?

Fred Gareau, our Tech Director Extraordinaire. His focus on this project has been quick turnarounds of new features, to give Zach lots of knobs to play with, as well as many many tech improvements -- to make our code more re-usable, maintainable, and much more efficient. While some of this stuff is very under-the-hood, there are plenty of tweaks that are easy to point to visually, like giving our Pirates really interesting flight paths, or adding arcs to our Cannon shots for better visibility. But while Fred can code, he can't write...

So we have Dante Douglas -- hey, the first new face! Dante's laying out the entire world lore right now! He and Zach are working on a story bible that we can pull interesting quests from. Something that gives our story history and depth. He'll also be the one actually writing the dialogue, too, which includes characters this time around, with their own goals and motivations. We'll see many different peoples in various cities and biomes, all made by...

BJ Timberlake - Art Warlock, our returning environment artist from Airborne Kingdom. Pretty much everything on the ground is his modeling -- the mines, the world geo, the rocks and various frills. He's already created the lookset for our starting region, which you can briefly see in our trailer, and now he's moving onto new biomes to explore. Places where you can find novel technologies, that lead to a variety of buildings once researched. Buildings made by...

Amanda Cheng -- another new friend! If BJ is making everything on the ground, Amanda is making everything in the sky. All the housing, production, lift, propulsion, morale, and many more categories of buildings flying through the air. That also includes all other flying objects too -- gather planes, enemy pirates... flying merchants??? Additionally, she's responsible for the overall cohesive look of the game. She's recently created an Art Bible, and has been adjusting post-processing effects, and tweaking any new materials or VFX I might give her to work with. That's a lot of new stuff, all tested by...

AJ Fraser, our part-time tester and full-time cheerleader! He played hours upon hours of Airborne Kingdom, and now he has been passionately breaking all of our new features -- thankfully, before they're broken by all of you! He'll also be recording a lot of our #content for sharing on social media, so if you see a GIF you like across the internet, make sure you let him know!

Those are all the people touching the game on a daily basis, but of course there are a few more folks helping fly this big contraption. Paul Aubry is returning to compose another masterpiece soundtrack. FiftyCC will still be doing our PR, especially around big trailers and launch. And of course we have the fine folks from Stray Fawn helping publish the game -- everything from submitting to events, to handling a lot of our social media, to goosing those Steam numbers.

(Speaking of Steam, have you wishlisted yet?! If anyone hasn't, it would be really really helpful if you do!)

With so many folks doing so many things, it'll be difficult deciding what to post about every week! But I'll leave it here for now, this update is extra long. I promise the next one will be less of a text-wall and feature many more cool images.

For now, thanks again for being so supportive, and I'm happy to have y'all along with us as we fly towards Early Access next year!

Jul 26, 2023

Tide of Shadows Twitch Drops Details

Hunt: Showdown 1896 - Crytek_Violet

Earn Event Points for Tide of Shadows, Weapon Charms, and two types of Supply Crates (standard and Night of the Hunter) by participating in our latest Twitch Drops Campaign. All you need to do is watch Hunt: Showdown streams from July 27th through August 3rd to earn a range of in-game rewards and Event Points.

Twitch Drops & Twitch Drops FAQ

Twitch Drops are in-game rewards that you can earn simply by watching streamers playing Hunt. To collect Drops, connect your Twitch account to your game account and watch your favorite Hunt: Showdown streamers. Drops rewards will be available to all Twitch streamers, just enable drops in your channel, connect your account via the creator dashboard, and make sure you're streaming in the Hunt: Showdown category.

To find out how to connect your accounts as a viewer or streamer, and for all the in-depth detail you need about this Drops event, check out our FAQ.

Twitch Drops Rewards

Different rewards are available on different days, with a minimum watch time on Hunt: Showdown Drops-enabled streams needed for each reward.

For the first time, we are introducing special “Night of the Hunter Partner Supply Crates" which will include an instance of a Legendary Hunter. Check out what's on offer, and when to tune in to grab these rewards below:

Event Points

July 27th – August 3rd - Watch any participating Hunt: Showdown streamer for 1 hour (60 minutes) to earn 750 Event Points.
You can earn a maximum of 750 points per day during all days of the Campaign, so watching every day will earn you a total of 5,250 Event Points!

Weapon Charms

July 27th – August 3rd – Watch any “Night of the Hunter" Partner streamer for 180 minutes to unlock the “Moondial" Weapon Charm.
August 1st – August 3rd – Watch any participating Hunt: Showdown streamer for 180 minutes to unlock the “Carnassial Wills" Weapon Charm.

Supply Crates

Supply Crates are back, but this time we have a new variant for you too. First, we will have the standard Supply Crates which can be earned by watching any participating Hunt: Showdown streamer on selected days. Each will grant you several non-Legendary in-game item instances, such as weapons, consumables, and a random amount of Hunt Dollars.

Supply Crates will be available on the following days:

July 27th – available for 24 hours
July 29th – available for 24 hours
July 31st – available for 24 hours
August 2nd – available for 24 hours

There will be a total of 4 Supply Crates available per day on the days listed above during the Twitch Drops Campaign. Each Supply Crate is available to claim after 2 hours (120 minutes) of watch time and will contain 8 non-Legendary item instances:

1 random Rifle
1 random Pistol
1 random Shotgun
1 random Special Weapon
3 random Tools and/or Consumables
1 random amount of Hunt Dollars

Night of the Hunter Partner Supply Crates

Get your hands on our new Night of The Hunter Partner Supply Crates, special rewards that can be earned only while watching participating Night of the Hunter streamers. These Supply Crates will grant you one instance of a Legendary Hunter taken from the roster of Bloodbond Hunters*, plus non-Legendary in-game item instances such as weapons, tools, and a random amount of Hunt Dollars.

There will be a total of 4 Night of the Hunter Partner Supply Crates available on selected days during the campaign (outlined below) and you will need 2 hours (120 minutes) of watch time to claim them.

*Please note that this will not permanently unlock any of the Bloodbond Hunters for you, but will grant a single instance of a Hunter, whether you own the Hunter or not.

Night of the Hunter Supply Crates will be available on the following days:

July 28th – available for 24 hours
July 30th – available for 24 hours
August 1st – available for 24 hours

Night of the Hunter Partner Supply Crates include:

1 Legendary Hunter Instance
1 random Rifle
1 random Pistol
1 random Shotgun
1 random Special Weapon
3 random Tools and/or Consumables
1 random amount of Hunt Dollars

Don't miss out on this chance to watch some great streamers and earn yourself a boost as you play through Tide of Shadows with our latest Twitch Drops Campaign. We'll leave you with a reminder to check out our Night of the Hunter Partner list, and you can get all the information about how to connect your accounts as a watcher or a streamer with our FAQ.

Happy watching, and happy hunting!

See you in the Bayou,

~ The Hunt Team