There's more summer goodies coming! From Merchandise to K-Ching, sign up for our Summer Pre-registration to enter the raffle to win these prizes! Just signing up will earn you a Hair Color Palette Cube!

To pre-register, head to the link below, log onto the website, and click the Pre-register Now! button at the bottom!

https://elsword.koggames.com/summer-pre-registration-event/

Potential performance and stability gain.

Take this opportunity and get 25% discount on With PURGE - Three vs Blood.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/25725/Spiele_Bndel/

---

- Twitch
- YouTube
- Discord
- Twitter
- Steam Franchise
- Facebook

Welcome to Forensic Friday Friday- Fri- F- day----- what -Pd- I don't know----
RESTARTING...
RESTARTING...
RESTARTING...

WELCOME BACK...

Oops I seem to be broken, much like our development currently! But not to fret, we are merely overexaggerating. This week we have been stuck in the metaphorical hole of development hell. Hell because we are not enjoying ourselves in the slightest? Why? Rewrites and Bugfixes! That's why! But as the week comes to a close, we are finally starting to climb out of the hole we dug ourselves by not researching effective designs for AI systems :/

Anyways, what's important is the news! The news is both good and bad. Starting with the bad news: We are behind on the roadmap! But the good news: We are nearly done with revamping our NPC AI, and with that will come a significantly smoother development. With any new system, it takes a bit of beating in before its robust and reliable enough, which is what we have spent most of the week doing. A mountain of bugs and issues, is surprisingly a good thing, as it just means we are finding all the possible edge cases and extreme scenarios, and pushing our new AI system to the limit.

So in lieu of that... we will get back on the road(map) soon! We may need another week or 2, but hopefully in no more than 2 weeks time, the roadmap will resume in all its glory, and maybe at an accelerated pace.

In other news... pathfinding is multithreaded. NICE. Or at least the code exists to support it, but it hasn't been meshed into the game yet, but eventually it will make its way through!

NPCs also now can watch TV, using the new AI system. Once all the bugs have been ironed out with the underlying system, this kind of activity could probably be done in half an hour (probably less) of development time which is a good feeling. This also led to a discovery that NPCs could see through walls placed diagonally to one another, so now NPCs detect if they can see a location using a modified version of Bresenham's line algorithm that gets all tiles between themself and the location they are looking at correctly! Many thanks to this) lovely blog post for the idea!

And to end on, the anomaly poll winner for this week is... _drum roll_

S-0133 - "The floor between floors":
S-0033 appears as a completely normal elevator/lift from the outside. It can effect any lift by random. so doesn't have one defined appearance. Using the effected lift allows access to a whole new floor, only accessible through the lift.

(sad 119 noises)

Many thanks to all that voted, and we'll see you in the next Mechanical Monday in 2 weeks to show off the document in full!




Time to file this case, and close it for good. Thanks for reading, and your patience. We hope to get back on the roadmap as much as you guys.


Case Closed.
The Team
Plasmarc Studios

-Buffed several early-game enemies.
-Fixed some spelling mistakes.
-Hopefully addressed an issue where the game would sometimes crash at random points.

NOTE: Please save as often as possible to prevent any unnecessary loss of data/progress!

I'm beyond thrilled to share that Abalon is now officially Steam Deck Verified! This is a goal I've been striving for ever since I heard about Steam Deck back in July of 2021.

The first major milestone was integrating Steam Input controller support back in October 2022. It turns out this was a lot more challenging than I initially estimated, but well worth the effort and a fantastic learning experience. The second milestone was adding Native Linux and Steam OS support, which I was very proud to accomplish this year in early July. Finally, my latest push to add UI scaling and controller glyphs this month finally saw my goal realized, and I couldn't be happier to bring you a turn-based tactics and card strategy experience that plays great on Deck!


Achievement Unlocked: Steam Deck Verified!

I hope you enjoy and I can't wait to hear about your experiences playing Abalon on Steam Deck :)

~Ross

Thank you for playing X8! A quick hotfix coming your way to fix some issues.

If you have been enjoying the game, please consider leaving us a review on the Steam store page, we'd really appreciate it!

We will also be attending PAX West 2023 this year, from September 1st-4th in Seattle, booth 3105! If you are going, come say hi! We'd love to meet you all. You can read more about it here: https://www.sknr.net/2023/08/03/vr-shooter-x8-comes-to-pax-west/

• Fixed server crash when casting Sarai's Power Surge
  
• Fixed player can achieve "Catalyst" when they plant Syphon once instead of 100 times
  
• Fixed Nyx's Cyberwire to disappear faster after detonating
  
• Fixed Wrist Shop Icon displaying on player's hand after Buy Phase
  
• Fixed Wrist Shop may not load

• Lighting on the heroes in the Character Selection room on Yakuza map is too dark on Quest 2 standalone
  
• Lighting on the weapons in Skirmish and Yakuza maps are dark on Steam build
  
• Wrist Shop Icon can be displayed in the Character Selection phase
  
• Wrist Shop is harder to open when switched to Primary Hand

**Please be advised that players on an older version of the game will no longer have access to the online servers until you update your game.

Thank you for your patience while we build a better game with your help!

Download X8 here!
📌 Meta: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/4518172508241377/

📌 Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1763510/X8/

Hiya everyone! Apologies for the delayed Forensic Friday post, but we're here now. There's not too much new content this week, but still some interesting parts nonetheless (at least in our opinions! :D). Happy reading!


There's not too much more to say on this that wasn't described last week. However, in case someone decides to use this blog as inspiration for their own game, we'll describe a couple of the quirks we have encountered along the way, and our solutions so far.


One of the biggest issues we've encountered has been the "tunnel-vision" NPC problem, that occurs when NPCs in game start one task, and fixate on it until it's conclusion, without considering other relevant factors in their environment. This can make NPCs appear stupid, as they fail to react appropriately to changing circumstances or prioritise tasks effectively. While in other games, like the Sims, this is just passed off as "dumb" behaviour, in our game this may often be the difference between life and death, or successful containment and containment breaches.

Therefore, to counteract this problem, we now make NPCs rank and choose their preferred task every game tick. However, due to the random nature of NPCs choosing one of their top 3 ranked tasks, we've made it so NPCs only change tasks if a new task is made available that an NPC ranks higher than their current task. By making it change every tick, NPCs now will be able to react to events in real time, which hopefully makes them more flexible and adaptive. For instance, a builder may stop by a coworker for a chat, before continuing with moving materials to a construction site, or someone taking a shower will now stop if someone starts shooting at them - all common-sense and realistic behaviours.


Another issue that arose came because of this change to reranking and choosing tasks every game tick. Depending on which NPC executed its code first, that NPC would get first choice for every task available in the world. However, since the order in which NPCs execute code isn't always the same, this would lead to high rated tasks constantly switching hands between NPCs, all relying on the lottery of which NPC would choose first. In real game terms, this could mean a bunch of NPCs constantly getting in and out of a shower every tick, as they jostle over the highest rated task - showering - in the area.

Therefore, we have introduced a task reservation system, whereby an object advertising a task keeps track of the NPC that is carrying out its task. This advertisement is then temporarily locked for 2 ticks to the NPC in question. If the NPC decides to stop the task, then 2 ticks later, the object can advertise to everyone again. Meanwhile, in the more common case that the NPC would continue its task, it has special priority to choose its current task, creating more seemless task completion, and less tug-of-war style situations!


We've also been starting our slow social media revival over the last week, with daily posts on Twitter (yes, we're still calling it that). Whether it's bad memes, blog post announcements or just general updates, give us a follow for some of the content of all time! (plus likes and retweets for the algorithm are much appreciated)


The first twitter post


And that's a wrap for this week. Not too much new content to show while we continue Utility AI, but we hope to have this finished by next Friday! In the meantime, thanks for reading as always, and we'll see you on Monday in our Discord for the next anomaly poll!!


Case Closed.
The Team
Plasmarc Studios

Extras menu bugs fixed

The International is fast approaching! After months of competition, twelve teams have secured their invites to TI, with eight more set to join them after the upcoming regional qualifiers.

The International is watched by millions, from casual players to seasoned veterans and retired pros. Every year we look for new opportunities to make The International even more exciting, entertaining and accessible than ever before. This year, we've focused on improving the viewing experience for a broader range of fans. While no format can be perfect, we're always trying to strike a balance between things that have worked in the past and things that could work even better in the future.

So with TI 2023 on the horizon, we wanted to walk you through every detail of the format changes we’re trying out this year, and our thought process behind them.


One obvious difference this year is the event schedule. A live competition is always more exciting when people can watch it as it’s actually happening, not hours or days later, and we wanted to make it easier for more people to do that.

To that end, we're scheduling nearly every game over a Friday-through-Sunday weekend break. It'll take three weekends to fit in all the games for a twenty-team tournament — a weekend for Group Stage (October 12-15), a weekend for Playoffs (October 20-22), and a weekend for The Finals (October 27-29).


As a landmark esports event, The International attracts viewers who have never played Dota, or even watched a live gaming event. We hear a consistent message from first-time watchers: that TI is exciting, but can sometimes feel overwhelming. There are so many matches happening, new viewers can find it difficult to understand which to focus on.

So, this year we've split "The International" into two distinct phases, with two distinct names: The Road To The International, which includes Group Stage and Playoffs and captures all of the drama of pitting the best 20 Dota teams against each other until only eight remain; and The International itself, where those final eight teams battle to claim the Aegis of Champions.

So if you're already invested in Dota (and if you've read this far, that’s probably a yes), and want to watch every step of every journey, you'll still start it with The Road to The International — you can watch the Group Stage as you usually would, and the Playoffs will still be played live in front of an audience. And if you're new to Dota or The International, and just want to experience the biggest moments of the event, we’ve made it clearer what they are and when you can see them.


In the old Group Stage format, two groups of ten teams would play Round Robin over the course of four frantic days, usually five games at a time. This meant that each team was playing so many matches that early games just didn't feel meaningful. It also meant that a lot of matches in the final days of Group Stage were literally meaningless, because they wouldn’t actually affect the final standings. The challenge, then, was to come up with a Group Stage format that heightened the stakes of each and every game.



In the new Group Stage format, instead of two groups of ten teams playing for four days, four groups of five will now play for two, with the bottom team in each group getting eliminated. This means that every team will now only play four games instead of the previous nine, making every game impactful to a team’s final standings in the group.

Additionally, the second half of Group Stage is now composed of head-to-head matches between the remaining 16 teams, which will decide which teams enter the Playoffs in the Upper Bracket.


Playoffs kick off on Friday, October 20th at the Seattle Convention Center’s Summit, featuring the top eight teams fighting for the four Upper Bracket slots of The International. Saturday and Sunday will consist of a series of elimination matches, with the four survivors making it into TI’s Lower Bracket. Unlike previous years, all matches will be played in a best-of-three format.




The International will feature the final eight teams of the event, competing in Climate Pledge Arena October 27th to 29th to determine which team is the best in the world. Friday and Saturday will feature four best-of-three matches each day, and Sunday will feature a battle between the top three teams — first in the Lower Bracket Finals, and finally in the best-of-five Grand Finals.




We’re thrilled to bring you year twelve of The International. It’s our goal to make every incarnation as exciting for invested fans as it is welcoming for newer players.

Tickets for both The Road To The International’s Playoff Stage at The Seattle Convention Center’s Summit, and The International itself at Climate Pledge Arena, will go on sale in the second half of August. We'll post additional details as soon as we get them.