As the final game mechanics are being added, progress on the game is moving forward fast! Some major features are coming to playtest soon, so make sure you’re signed up, and keep reading for everything we’ve got in store!

As mentioned in the previous update, resources and stock-keeping have now been added to the game. Once you start to hire Runner Crew, they will start to transport resources from the resource spawn point (more on those below!) to objects in need of them.



Commercial objects always get priority so they are able to sell products, while storage containers and tanks are filled up afterwards. At a later stage, players will be able to set the amount of resources to keep in stock at an object specifically, and also what kind of resources should be stored.

To help you better understand what paths to keep clear, for both guests and crew, markers have been added to indicate where characters will spawn. These are also used to indicate where resources will be spawned, when runner Crew picks them up.



At the moment there is only a single spawn for characters and one for resources for each map, but soon larger maps will be added, containing multiple spawn locations for various types of characters and resources.

There has also been considerable progress on the game's security mechanic. Using fences, entrances and backstage entrance points, you can to setup your event's backstage area so that your crew and artists will never be disturbed by curious visitors and freeloaders who don't want to buy a ticket.





These screenshots show the new updated visitor entrance asset, which can be used by visitors, crew and artists, as well as the new backstage entrance, which can only be used by crew and artists. You can see the area which can be used by any character highlighted in blue, with the specific areas only to be passed by crew or artists in pink.



As you can understand, some time will be needed to add all the features to make the best use of this mechanic possible, but the initial test version should be available to playtesters very soon, some time in the first weeks of August.

Once an initial version of the security system is in place, development focus will be on an entirely new user interface. The current user interface hasn't undergone any major updates since the game's development started almost 2 years ago, and as Unity has released a new and improved way to create User Interfaces since then, the full UI will be rebuilt from scratch. This will allow features to be added more easily, and gives an opportunity to align what is shown to the player with the current state of the game's mechanics.

For example, this will allow work to start on the Event Control Center, a dashboard / control panel for your entire Event and the state of its production. Once this is in place, we can add ticket sales as a feature, allowing players to sell tickets, including the ability to make money on presales when the Event has been announced, but load-in and construction hasn't started yet!
Also, this gives us an opportunity to prepare for translations and support for controllers, things which weren’t taken into account originally.

As you can understand, this will be a major improvement to the entire game, and a very necessary one as the game is getting ready for public testing during early access (and possibly sooner), more on that in the next update!

I focused on Quality of life improvements for this one. This is what has changed:

• When loading a saved game, the buy fuel menu will now select your previous faction supplier.
  
• Fixed a UI bug which would block out other windows.
  
• Fixed a ship order time typo.
  
• After finishing a ship order, the time text should now hide.
  
• Parallel manufacturing technology changes have new research times and money requirements.
  
• Robotization: 15s => 60s | 7361$ => 5920
  
• AI production lines: 300s => 250s | 16666$ => 21252
  
• Prices won't stick to their maximum and minimum limits. Instead, they will fluctuate more.
  
• The chance of a trader buying an item from the player has increased.
  
• Some QOL improvements when the player wants to infinitely manufacture items if they have either Robotization or AI production lines researched.

- fixes for handling paths with unicode characters
- fixes for AMD GPUs
- Vulkan stability improvements
- support for precompiled LUA scripts, greatly improves performance of script components in the scene
- HDRi image import will be converted to lower precision float for memory saving
- added 16-bit PNG support
- editor: terrain heightmap import/export supports 16-bit PNG
- editor: added KHR_materials_emissive_strength GLTF extension

Players can now copy polls and create them by pasting them into Twitch chat or directly into Stream Polls.

• Fixed the issue where gamepad controls were not working in the mod interface.
  
• Fixed the issue of Overload malfunction when using the Burst Gun
  
• Fixed the issue where Desert Area VI did not display unlock information.
  
• Fixed the issue where there was no pop-up window when an achievement was completed in-game.
  
• Fixed a gamepad navigation issue in the upgrade interface when there were no bottom buttons.
  
• Fixed an occasional gamepad malfunction in the upgrade interface.

• Adjusted advanced missions and weapon unlocks: reduced the level requirements for unlocking weapons.
  
• Optimized some advanced missions.

- Fixed crashing of Dive 8

Welcome to this weeks Skywatch development diary!

A few weeks ago, we gave you a deep dive into some of the progress made on our skyship engines. In today's post, we're following up with a glimpse at some of the other ship parts we've been working on - namely wings, helms and some cannons! This post is shorter than the engines post from a few weeks ago, but this is because these ship parts haven't received as much development time at the time of writing. We'll share more progress on these parts as it happens.

First up, let's take a look at some wings! Below, you can see one of the early concept pieces for our lower tier wings - the thought process behind the early game wings that you'll have access to, is that they would mostly be made from wood, maybe with some scrap metal attachments (e.g. improvised ailerons, wing mounting plates etc.)



And below is a textured model of one of the lower tier wings. Unlike the low tier wooden wings in Worlds Adrift, which were simple planks of wood strapped together as pictured, we wanted our wooden wings to look like they've been carved and shaped this time around, to better reflect the more advanced level of technology in Lost Skies.





Below is a look at a slighter higher tier wing. Unlike the wing above, which is a brand new model, this wing is a legacy Worlds Adrift wing model that's receiving the upgrade treatment to bring the level of detail in line with Lost Skies. As you can see, this wing is mostly made of metal, but is still somewhat 'scrappy' looking.

In this new patch, we have updated the "Second Circle" for the main version and added new features to make the game even more complete.

In the second circle, Most of the enemies have more health bonus, This can lead to frustration due to lack of the crutial information. To improve the gaming experience, we have added health bars to regular enemies. You can disable health bars in the settings menu if you prefer.


Enemies have a chance to drop "Soul Collector", which will collect all dropped souls for you when pick it up.

Once you have completed a stage, you can choose to play the "Second Circle". This option is unlocked by completing the "Chaos 3" level of the map.

The "Second Circle" will reset the stage timer and increase the challenge level in the following ways:

• Enemies have more health and damage.
  
• Enemies spawn more frequently.
  
• Battle two bosses at the same time
  
• Higher-level enemies will appear more often, also have a chance to drop gold, experience, or helpful items.

The "Second Circle" is a great way to test your skills and earn some more gold.


The balance is still under adjustment and some helper item and upgrade will be added later, Please consider it as the feature that challenge your skills and keep you busy while we develop the new content. If you have any suggestions, join the official discord channel below.
Discord
Dissustions

If you are enjoying the game, Don't forget to rate us on steam, it really helps us out a lot!

Hey everyone!!

I've just uploaded a new beta branch to Steam
it's v15p999001033 and can be accessed with beta code LETSTESTFILESAVING

beta codes can be entered here:



now: what is this? what's this all about? who cares about file saving? 👀
there's this issue that's been plaguing zeepkist since I first started working on it: sometimes, random files I would save to disk would corrupt and zeepkist would break
think progression files, settings files, or even the internal file that saves all of your times in levels

why did this happen?

not really sure, windows is just weird like that sometimes and computers aren't perfect
so what I did was I created a whole new internal function "safefilesaving" which attemps 10 times to safe a file and does an MD5 hash check to make sure the file that got saved hasn't been corrupted
I ripped out all of the old file saving calls and redirected them to the new "safefilesaving" call

I've been testing everything and it all appears to work normally
but there's always the chance I've overlooked something

so that's why I've uploaded this new patch to a beta branch before setting it live for everyone
but other than being on a beta branch, it works the same as a regular branch, so you can upload to workshop, connect to server, etc etc etc

what I would suggest is everyone who wants to giving this a shot and seeing if they run into any game-breaking issues

list of save functions I've replaced:

• playlist saving
  
• settings saving
  
• progression saving
  
• internal "replay" saving (not saving replays yet, just keeps track of your times on different tracks)
  
• controller userdatastore saving
  
• workshop projects saving
  
• levels saving

if everything works, you shouldn't notice anything different
the only thing you might notice is that backup files now have a slightly different naming convention, and levels don't get empty backup folders anymore

so yeah that's that!!
it's not flashy at all, but it's pretty important to not have your game files corrupt randomly :D



once everything is working and stuff I'll push this update live :)

happy zeepkisting!!

The following languages have been fixed and completed by the community:

• Polish translation thanks to Delta.
  
• French translation thanks to CdriX.

Thanks to Delta and CdriX for your help!