Attention Racers,

During the August 9 (PT) Mid-Season 3 Update, we will be introducing a pair of changes to Flag Mode, in an effort to combat certain abnormal play patterns, as well as relaxing an event's difficulty to make it more attainable through normal play.

First, one of the elements of the Capture the Flag Event, the "Win 5 Flag Mode Races within 2 Minutes" challenge, will be updated. It will now challenge Racers to win 5 Flag Mode Races within 2.5 Minutes, making it a bit easier to complete through normal play.

Additionally, we will be updating Flag Mode to forcibly Retire those that are not attempting to play the match, specifically targeting Racers that are AFKing throughout the match. Normal play should be unaffected by these changes.

We hope that these changes will help improve Flag Mode for Racers of all skill levels. There's more coming with the August 9 (PT) Mid-Season 3 Update, and keep an eye out for the Patch Notes coming soon!

Thank you,

-The KartRider: Drift Team-

This update improves early levels and adds a lot of new items. 

• 11 New items
  • Trident
  • Warlock's Orb
  • Divine Intervention
  • Witch Hat
  • Technology
  • Warmaster Armor
  • Shackles
  • Hoverboard
  • Gift
  • Toy Box
  • Chocolate Heart

• Poison hazards now work similar to fire — they only damage you after standing on poison for 2+ turns. Damage increased from 0.5 to 1. Lifetime increased by 1 turn.
• You can now find throwable pots in Flooded Cave.
• Rooms in Flooded Cave can now be connected via dirt paths (on top of their normal connections).
• Levels can now sometimes have extra small rooms.
• Rebalanced enemy sets in early levels to make them a bit more engaging with the player.
• Rabbits now chase you. They now also tend to spawn in groups similar to Lunatic Slugs. HP reduced from 0.5 to 0.25. Changed death effects of poisonous and fire rabbits.
• Frogs now move similarly to Snipers and Lizard Warriors — they chase you while trying to align themselves horizontally to you.
• Electric Hermit Mages now shoot diagonally and horizontally but they no longer shoot vertically.
• Mushrooms and cacti enemies now randomly get up more often. Mushrooms now move in your direction if they randomly get up while close to you. 
• Fire from Light Keeper's bombs can now spread slightly.
• Snails and Poisonous Stars leave poison on death.
• Worms can now also spawn moving horizontally rather than vertically. Worms will never pick a starting direction that will make them stuck in a 1-tile gap.
• Significantly reduced the average density of dirt blocks in rooms with dirt blocks.

• Add mythical variants for Spiky Shield, Stunning Shield and Jester Shield.
• Knight Boots no longer give fire immunity.
• Increased Bow attack from 1.25 to 1.5.
• Increased Cerberus Bow attack from 1 to 1.25.
• Book of Ice
  • Deals double damage if you manage to hit 2 enemies simultaneously.
  • Uses reduced from 4 to 3.
• Book of Flames
  • Reduced attack from 2 to 0.5.
  • Now applies burning to enemies which deals (0.25 + magic attack / 2) damage every turn.
  • Reduced rarity from Golden to Green.
• Increased rarity of Book of the Black Star from Green to Golden.
• Effects on attacking (Flask of Poison, Blade Crown, Divine enchantment etc.) now activate when [use]ing Thunder Scepter instead of when charging it.
• Player-created hazards (e.g. from Flask of Poison) get immunity to getting overridden by other hazards for 2 turns.
• Crossbow Glove now synergizes with Quiver of the Forest Spirit.
• Improved Possessed Sandals sprite and added sound effects.
• Improved sound effects for Scythe and Scream in a Bottle.

• You can now sometimes find discounts in shops. Shops will always prioritize giving discounts for items that you used the least according to your Encyclopedia.
• Doors can now be destroyed by explosions. Destroying both supporting walls will also destroy doors.
• Level generator now tries its hardest to not place the starting room close to the boss room in Ruins.
• Guardian Angels and Soul Catchers now see you from 1 tile farther away.
• False Seraph now doesn't use an attack where he chases you for several turns in the 2nd part of the 2nd phase because it was often undodgeable.
• Added drop shadow to prices in shops to make them more readable.
• Lunatic Leader now never spawns more than 1 Earth Mage per wave.
• Added sound effects for switching weapons and Batsey grazing.
• Improved sound effects for Lunatic Beast.

• Fixed crash that could happen when taking damage from Soul Catcher's souls.
• Improved death check algorithm. The game now checks if you died at the end of every turn instead of immediately when taking damage. This fixes bugs like:
  • Batsey dying when shooting revolver and grazing at 0.25 hp.
  • Player dying when taking damage from a bullet but immediately healing it up with Vampire Crown.
• Fixed Cave Tyrant and Scorpion Queen often not taking damage from dark poison hazards.
• Fixed worms and Cave Tyrant incorrectly changing their direction if the player attacks them during their movement animation.
• Fixed inconsistent Possessed Sandals damage when using them with Spectral Spear.
• Fixed Possessed Sandals animation not playing its last few frames.
• Mythical Serpent Knife no longer overlaps toxic clouds if you attack multiple times on the same tile. 
• Potentially fixed item description box sometimes disappearing without an animation
• Fixed incorrect sprite positions of giant and tiny worms.
• Fixed smoke from boss doors not disappearing when dashing through doors with the True Seraph.
• Fixed doors opening the wrong way when dashing into them with the True Seraph.
• Fixed fire wheels getting stuck on grails when summoned by an obelisk.

Greetings, Royal ORX slayers!

ORX is approaching its Early Access Anniversary, so it’s time to talk about our current and future plans for the game — with the updated Roadmap and lots of teasers!

First of all, we’re so thankful to everyone who decided to support ORX in Early Access! Without you nothing would be possible, and we feel a special bond with you, early adopters. Coincidently, this is also a large reason why ORX is still in Early Access — we feel obligated to substantially improve the game based on the feedback we’ve received from all of you in these past months.

We'd like to take a moment to apologise for not getting ORX to version 1.0 this year, and a somewhat slow update schedule. But rest assured no part of this was due to a lack of capability or an excess of naps!

Far from that, we’ve been hard at work internally discussing some really big changes and upcoming additions to the game. And now, it’s time we finally share them with you — our dear players!

*Click the image to open it in full resolution


As you can see, the Roadmap became considerably bigger, yet at the same time more focused and direct. There are so many items on it, that we didn’t have enough space to elaborate on some of them! As such, we’re going to tell you more about most important roadmap beats in this post, so you know what to look forward to!



The first major addition on the horizon is, of course, the Boreal Nomads. We worked hard to provide this faction with truly distinct gameplay, and now we’re confident it’s going to feel different, yet familiar compared to other factions. As promised in our Lore Devlog, we’re currently writing its 2nd part, focused specifically on gameplay — coming up very soon!

Boreal Nomads are going to feature indirect controls for their units. The Giants have a will of their own: hunting, gathering Miracles and buying items from your village! You might be wondering how this looks in practice, and what exactly is a Miracle? Be on a lookout for our Gameplay overview devlog!

This 3rd playable faction will be added to the game in two parts: the initial release will feature all of the mechanics and every important card, and the 2nd release will provide cards to open up more playstyles and maybe introduce some additional mechanics.



Before the Boreals however, we’re planning to add couple new systems targeted to enhance the strategy aspects of the game and increase replayability — Elemental Villages and Advisors.

Villages are the evolution of the Neutral Buildings you’re already familiar with. This time, though, they can be captured by both the player and the ORX! To capture a village you need to simply build something on a tile adjacent to it — same as always, — this will grant you global buffs depending on the village’s elemental type. However, if ORX manage to capture it first, then you’d better prepare to face off against Elemental ORX, supercharged with an according element. We hope that Villages will provide more strategic elements and breathe new life into missions.

Players, who have tried out the Experimental Branch of the game, already know about the Advisors, which we tested couple cycles ago. We’ve heard your feedback, and felt ourselves that this system wasn’t engaging enough, so we changed some things! Now Advisors provide useful abilities or cards, which you can play get on demand during missions, by expending one of the Advisors “charges”.

In their first iteration these won’t be refillable, but we’re thinking of ways to change this in future updates. We hope that this system will provide players with a way to complement their playstyle and an additional layer of tactics.



Giving more power to the players is great, but we’d like ORX to be more engaging and pose a bigger threat as well. So we’re giving some power back to the greenskins! Since the deck builder is finally coming to the game, it’s only natural that ORX should demand certain tools and strategies to deal with them. We’re changing the clans to be uniform and feature a single ORX type, and also making them more distinct from each other — with each clan posing a unique threat and nudging the player to use specific cards.

For example, ORX archers now deal higher damage, but they will also lose their composure when attacked by melee units. Additionally, we’ll also tackle wave behaviour in order to make it more engaging and have a better difficulty curve. With these changes we’re bringing “menace” back into “greenskin menace”!


*Concept visualisation - final implementation may vary.

Next up are Smart Events — a thorough expansion of the existing random events. Inspired by other deck-building games, we’ve decided to add new mechanics to our random events to make their outcomes less predictable and more meaningful. We haven’t decided how Smart Events will look just yet, but they will most likely include memory and precision checks, randomization, and maybe even mini-games.

Events will also receive logic improvements, making quest chains and branching stories possible. After all, even a good story gets stale after awhile, and changing things up a bit is sure to make the game all the more exciting!


*Concept visualisation - final implementation may vary.

Now let’s talk about meta-progression and what the Throne Room will bring to ORX.
Currently, players can only unlock new cards, artifacts, acts, and factions by accumulating points at the end of the run. We want to improve this and make meta-progression more interesting — add new kinds of unlocks, a way to showcase your achievements and marry this system with the overall game.

This is where the Throne room comes into play! It will be your main hub, where you can find even more new systems (still very WIP), set up decorations, brush up on ORX lore, see your overall progress, and interact with Advisors.

We also have plans to expand the Advisors with this update to include new interactions, means to regain their charges, and maybe even a little something extra! Once we add the Throne room you can finally be the lord of your castle at all times.



And finally, let’s talk about Void Arcanists. As you might’ve guessed, it’s the code name for the 4th and final playable faction! Since we only have the concepts for its ruler, we don’t have a lot of details to share just yet, but we still want to spoil you a bit with the faction’s fantasy we’re aiming to fulfil.

Void Arcanists come from the Western and Eastern Void Poles — the parts of the world where Medea clashes with the Void, affected by the Corruption the most. They’re the greatest scholars in the lands of Medea and pursue the knowledge of arcane manipulation and the art of artifice — unlocking the extraordinary potential in any object and animating them.

Their towns rise above the clouds with enormous pagodas, resting upon floating islands. And their armies consist of arcane beings, machinery and… reanimated cadavers. With their minds veiled by the Corruption, Void Arcanists see magic as a utility to achieve enlightenment and goals bigger than any human’s life. Are you prepared to discard your morality in pursuit of building the biggest empire known to men?

That's all for now! We hope this devlog covers anything from the Roadmap which might’ve been a bit unclear, but if you still have questions please feel free to ask them in the comments!

We’re happy to finally reveal the updated roadmap to you all and feel immense determination to deliver everything promised. We have such an amazing community and we want you to have an equally amazing game! Thank you for supporting us on this journey — be it by providing feedback or by simply playing and enjoying ORX. See you very soon in our upcoming Boreal Nomads gameplay overview and updates!

Make sure to join our official Discord server and follow us on Twitter to learn more about the development of the game, get a first peek at upcoming content, or just to say hi to the team!

Take an in-depth look at how EA SPORTS FC™ 24 delivers an elevated matchday experience with new cloth simulations, feature lighting, and an enhanced Frostbite™ Engine dialling up the detail to make every moment look and feel more like the real thing.



https://store.steampowered.com/app/2195250/EA_SPORTS_FC_24/

Greetings, I'm Rich, Lead Animator on Astronimo and dutifully tasked with infusing each frame of the game with as much wobble, jiggle and flop as I can physically muster.

I'd be delighted to take you through the Animation process and offer some insight into a few of the (arguably questionable) decisions we've made along the way!

But first, for sake of context, let's journey back to the first pieces of animation I created for this game, so many moons ago.

First Steps

When I first rolled up to the project, fresh faced and several years younger, the characters were little more than blank capsules, sliding about the place with reckless abandon.



My first port of call was to make some style tests for the player character's basic movement and attempt to find a fitting gait for our fearless spacefolk.





In the final game you can still see the residual DNA of the latter two, beaten into shape for our run & jog speed animations respectively.



“But what sorcery is this?” you might be asking, “How are they moving at all!?” Well, let's take a brief trip down the animation pipeline!

The Animation Pipeline

To begin, a beautiful 3d model arrives, fresh off the press, from our talented Art Department. There may be some pre-emptive back & forth with an Artist, vertices might be pushed around, dimensions tweaked until we're confident the model will withstand the immeasurable burden of being jostled about by an Animator.



Next, it's time for Rigging! We begin by building a skeleton for the model. It likely won't have as many bones as you or I, but each bone will roughly correspond to a singular moving part of the model.



The skeleton is bound to the 3d model via a process commonly referred to as "skinning" in which each vertex is told which respective bone (or combination of bones) it should follow.



With our skeleton in place, a control system is built to sit atop the bones and drive them - the strings to our puppet if you will. This is usually composed of colourful shapes that we can easily grab and pull around, sometimes in order to animate but quite often just to entertain ourselves.



Our rig is now functionally complete and it is, at last, time to animate! By moving our controls from one position to another over a given time range and setting “keyframes”, we can lay out what is essentially a list of instructions that appear as fluid movement when played back. We can set keyframes for things like position, rotation and scale!




Rinse and repeat for each control and you've got yourself something that resembles a game-ready animation! The process is essentially the same whether you're animating a mechanical plunger or an anthropomorphic space crocodile!




Our animation can now be exported out to the game engine and implemented! And with that out of the way, let's talk a little bit about the approach to style within the Animation of Astronimo.

Stylistic Approach

From the outset, we knew we wanted something quite rubbery & slapstick that would play nicely with the visual appearance of the characters & environment. We aimed to find a balance that matched pace in silliness, whilst staying in keeping with the strong physics-based nature of the game.

After several passes of refinement, we whittled it down to a rough visual rule-set that leans heavily into a sense of elasticity with plentiful helpings of squash and stretch, but makes effort not to stray too far from a believable sense of physics (discounting meditational levitation!).



As such, reasonably realistic representations of gravity and mass are important here - objects shouldn't hang for too long in the air, nor should they stop moving abruptly without good reason to do so. They should, however, drag behind, overlap and wobble wherever possible, as though each individual segment is comically held together by novelty springs.



There are, no doubt, exceptions to this ruleset throughout, but this was the basic blueprint we strived for. Let’s look at a few applications of this approach!

The Humanoid


The player character (or “Rig_humanoid” as we lovingly call them) is perhaps the life form you’ll spend the most time with. We realised fairly early on that, due to the often sizable distance they may be from the camera, larger & more exaggerated movements were crucial in order to remain readable from further away.



With the ability to manipulate the characters upper body and arms at any time, the player themselves takes on a role of puppeteer and it becomes, in a way, a matter of player & animator co-operation to bring these small squishy creatures to life.



As such, we found many of our in-game taunts (A collection of dances and emotes you’ll find as rewards scattered about the star system) worked best when the upper torso is kept fairly stable, affording the player the wiggle room they need to adequately express themselves. They are also able to augment most animations in the game in this same manner, by manually bending the character’s spine to add new flavour to a run, walk or jump. I personally found this system, at times, challenging to facilitate but massively gratifying to watch players explore and abuse.



For additional context-based squashiness & maximum gelatinous effect, there is a set of slightly horrifying poses that we additively blend over the top of the character’s animations depending on what they are doing & how fast they are moving. This allows them to dynamically stretch outwards when falling and compress upon impact.



Components & Contraptions

We wanted the components to feel tactile and lively when constructing contraptions, as though the building blocks themselves are waking up and springing to life.




We tried to imbue character into them by having them rapidly bloom into existence like flowers on a stem, rattle haphazardly when in use and judder to a halt.

Forgotten Machines


If not for our courageous commander, Captain Croc, then our only other companions in this deserted solar system are the abandoned mechanical apparatus that litter it. It doesn’t take much for us humans to project our human-like qualities & mannerisms onto inanimate objects and so that’s exactly what we did! Whilst un-inanimating them!



A little turn of the body or wobble of an antenna can go a long way in a player’s perception of an object as “sentient”. We often author short, idle-alt animation for these machines, playing at random intervals to keep them feeling alive (and presumably very lonely).



Closing Thoughts

The sheer amount of times and ways I’ve managed to misspell the word “animation” throughout this (pre-spellcheck) blog post has frankly been equal parts upsetting and sobering.

If you’ve made it this far, thankyou for indulging this Astronimo animation-flavoured ramble. If you have even half as much fun playing this game as I’ve had helping to make it, you’ll be in for an absolute treat.

Hi Folks,
quick update from us addressing the most urgent issues you have reported. Here is what changed:

Balancing:
⚖️ - To make up for the lost income from the fix to gold mines, enemies drop a little bit more Gold on Durststein (desert level), but the late game and the the final waves should be quite a bit more challenging now, bringing it more in line with the other levels. We'll keep a close eye on how these changes impacted the difficulty and make future adjustments if necessary.
Bugs:
🐛 - Gold mines were actually bugged and gave you 6 gold every single day. This has now been fixed and their income is reduced properly over time.

🐛 - The "Castle-Up" upgrade for the castle center reduced the cost for walls way too quickly. This issue is now resolved.

🐛 - You can no longer go out of bounds on Durststein (desert level)

🐛 - Enemy units can no longer "climb" the mountains to get past your walls on Durststein (desert level)

🐛 - We doubled the gravity for the player character so it should no longer feel as floaty

🐛 - You are reset to your castle center if you manage to fall through the map (does not address the core issue of falling through the map, but this should already help make those rare cases less frustrating)

🐛 - Achievements should now show up during gameplay instead of only after closing the game

🐛 - The monitor refresh rate in the graphics settings does not show all of its 29 decimal points anymore and is rounded instead

🐛 - You can no longer get yourself stuck behind the barracks on Frostsee (ice level)


Thanks for all of the bug reports! Doing our best! 🙂

Cheers
Jonas and Paul

• New GameMode: Flag Race
  
  • Carry your teams flag through all checkpoints first to win!
• Changed match + party size to 6 players (was 8)
  
• Game will now try to place party members on the same team before match starts
  
• Updated team names to be numeric instead of color (Team Blue -> Team 1)
  
• Added incoming damage indicator
  
• Updated peril state overlay
  
• Lowered Rocket Launcher projectile speed by 25%
  
• Rocket Launcher projectiles can now be destroyed by shooting them
  
• Fixed projectile splash damage ignoring friendly fire
  
• Added post-match rating feedback
  
• Other fixes and visual improvements

Known Issues

• Matchmaking is taking taking longer than usual
  
• Enemy outlines can randomly be visible through walls (you won't get banned for wall hax)
  
• Bomb timer UI is reported to not be visible sometimes
  
• Bot names can sometimes be different on scoreboard vs. in-game
  
• Gravity Well source can spawn inside geometry and becomes impossible to break
  
• Status effects do not properly reset in-between rounds

Hi, offroad fans!

We are several weeks from the launch of Offroad Mechanic Simulator and we're very happy that you're enjoying our game. However, we also track closely all the issues you report and work as a team to remove them or provide solutions as soon as possible.

In this patch, we address a common problem you have sent to us: slow loading and slow completing of the missions in the laptop. In addition to fixes, we have added a loading indicator in that cases, so you know that game is loading and not freezing. We have also resolved some issues related to Yeep, including it being missing from the garage, as well as some visual and technical issues regarding mounting some of the parts.

Please note: we are still working on the issue of parts being missing from the assembly mode selection menu, but still being present in storage. It is particularly hard to reproduce in a testing environment, so it may take us more time - thank you for sending us saves and logs to help us to find the source of the issue. The issue is in most cases resolved by reloading the save, so please use this solution until we provide a fix.

This update contains the following changes:

• Implemented solutions to amend the slow loading issues during save reloading or closing the mission
  
• Implemented a loading indicator communicating that the game is still loading data
  
• Resolved the issue with Yeep disappearing from the garage after unlocking it properly
  
• Disabled the instance of winning the Yeep without completing the Special Race
  
• Allowed the E key (use object) to be rebound to LMB properly
  
• Changed the display that said player should use a winch on the tree when racing in the Desert to the appropriate prompt
  
• Added 3840x1600 resolution support
  
• Amended the issue when a player could start the car searching mission when the car was already found
  
• Amended the icon of wheel house shell changing it to showing through the car wheel in some cases
  
• Amended the position of front-rear absorbers on the sport suspension of Pickup 1500

Do you enjoy offroading, but would like to have it mixed with something more adventurous and thrilling? We have just announced Offroad Survival - a new IP from Image Power, which mixes mechanics known from the popular survival genre with realistic offroad experience. The players will venture on a journey through the unmapped wilderness, set up a camp, use nature’s resources to survive the harsh conditions… and face unexplained happenings around them.

Take a look at our trailer:



You can add the game to your wishlist here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2535690/Offroad_Survival/

---

Remember that you can ask us anything on Discord:



https://store.steampowered.com/app/1387500/Offroad_Mechanic_Simulator/

• 2 Brand New Tables with online leaderboards and unlockable cosmetics!
  
• Medieval themed cannons with a heavy emphasis on cannons!

Additional Details here
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2152210/Roxy_Raccoons_Pinball_Panic__Medieval_Mayhem/

• New Witch Trial, row of 6 drop targets on left-hand side that activate life saver.
  
• Redesigned right hand-side, secondary flipper area.
  
• Adjusted some of the boards on the tables, changed their angles and physics materials to make for better ball flow.
  
• Turned some blocker art into tree stumps

• The following tables have New Backboard Art:
  
• Sports Spectacle, Wicked Warfare, Kooky Combat, Brutal Blitzkrieg, Birthday Bonanza, Bowling Bash, Blissful Builder, Construction Chaos

• Behind the scenes optimization

• Rising Stationary Target: A target that moves up and down over time. Various stats can be adjusted.
  
• Rising Walls: A wall/blocker that moves up and down over time. Various stats can be adjusted.

• Nala Ambience: One of Nasty Nala’s Theme songs, used in Mancala Madness.
  
• Creepy Castle & Nasty Knights: Songs used in the Medieval Mayhem DLC

• Mancala Madness Available for Everyone based on the new Roxy Game
  
• Creepy Castle & Nasty Knights Available to those who own the Medieval Mayhem DLC

• Maximum Bounce option added.

• Modified Colliders near the flipper area of the table.
  
• Rabbit Runner, Burrower & constant flippers instantly activate
  
• Expanded editor window size
  
• Misbehaving Wide Table Camera

Hi all, Tom here!

Just a quick message to say I've pushed a new build of the Demo today - Demo Version 0.17e. You can check the version number in the credits section of your phone. This version contains a few small fixes, and a new visual option as requested by players.

• New: Added a new option in the Visual Options section of the phone. You can now switch between handwritten and printed styles for the books. Hopefully this will help people who struggle reading cursive! It's also printed in black, if you need more contrast.
  
• New: Made it so you can turn off the torch again at the start (but only before you open the door!)
  
• Tweak: Fixed a couple of minor mistakes in the books
  
• Tweak: Moved and renamed the option to delete progress
  
• Tweak: Reduced Hi-7 table light intensity to make books a little easier to read
  
• Bug Fix: Fixed an issue when running the game from different locales (commas vs full stops in numbers)
  
• Bug Fix: Fixed an issue with the log buttons remaining on screen at lower frame rates

Remember, you might have to restart Steam for the update to appear for you.

Enjoy! I hope the book option in particular helps some folks!

- Amicable Animal