š¤š¤ REGISTER TO HAVE A CHANCE TO TAKE PART IN THE CLOSED BETA TEST
The Closed Beta Test registration period for TEKKEN 8 will end on 11 October 2023 8AM BST. For the winners, codes will be given on 18 October in order to pre-download.
*Players who won the CNT and had downloaded the CNT back in July can play the CBT - you do not need to register again. However, for winners who did not redeem their CNT code - you will have to register again.
TEKKEN 8 Closed Beta Test: Everything you need to know. Click here to know more!
The NOTH team has some great news! We survived making TAGLINE! The game is officially available to all!
What a journey it's been, 4 years later and here we are! Numb, somewhat amazed, and a little humbled. If we had an ounce of energy left in our crumpled, neglected bodies; we'd give ourselves a pat on the back!A huge thank you to those who wishlisted the game, played the demo, and supported us! Particularly our friends in the discord server. From every last demo player to the those who shared ourwork on socials - you helped this game come true.
Please enjoy this little world we've crafted for you. Remember to share your scores, tell your friends, and tag us if you make any content about TAGLINE.Reviews help out tremendously, so post one on the page and let us know what you think of the game! We've got places to be, bugs to hunt, and naps to take but believe us; we'll be keeping in touch!
With our latest map Piana up and running, weāre full steam ahead and working on the White War expansion! No news on its maps and release date, but weāll be sure to notify you all once weāre ready to do so. In case youāve missed it, hereās our latest roadmap.
Furthermore, we want to thank everyone who filled out our player survey! Weāre going through all your responses and analysing the data, which will be very helpful for Isonzoās future. The winners will also be contacted by email before the end of the month, so please keep an eye out for your inbox (or spam folder).
We're the winners!
Isonzo was nominated for the Dutch Game Awards in the category Best Audio! Last night was the award ceremony and weāre happy to share that Isonzo was declared the winner!
Special thanks to Bart Delissen, Lars Tesselaar & Niels van der Leest (Game Audio Squad) for their amazing work on the audio for Isonzo! If you want to read more about how the title song of Isonzo was created, be sure to read our devblog about it.
You can find the entire OST here on Steam. The Isonzo soundtrack contains about 30 minutes of music. Purchasing the DLC will help out the development of the game!
If you canāt afford it, you can also listen to it on our YouTube channel.
Now without further ado, letās meet a new member of the BlackMill team!
Hello! Could you introduce yourself Hi! Iām Aitor, a 25 year old (I had to double check) programmer from the Basque Country. I havenāt worked on anything youāve heard of before Isonzo, so hereās some cool ragdoll tech I developed a few years ago.
I was also a musician for about a decade, before I got deep into game development. I have an obsession with learning new instruments, with my current tally at around 8, depending on how low your skill threshold for counting one is, and Iām a progressive rock nerd.
What is your role in BlackMill Games and for the games? At BlackMill Games, every programmer does a bit of everything. But we also, as individual programmers, āownā systems based on what weāre interested in. For me, that mostly translates to three things: Third Person Animation, Physics and AI (the bot kind, not the copyright infringement image generating kind).
Where did your passion come from? As a kid, games always seemed like magic. They were things you could explore and learn inside and out. Years later, it clicked for me that they werenāt magic, that somebody had created that world, those systems, with the intention of them being explored. Since I already liked messing around with computers, it was a perfect fit. I wanted to be that somebody.
What was the first thing you made in Isonzo? I did a lot of tweaking on ragdolls and the forces that are applied to them, making them feel heavier.
Iāve spent many hours in my career setting up complicated scenarios, all to blow up ragdolls in. Game development really is a dream job.
What is a memorable moment in the development of Isonzo? In programming, you generally try to gradually improve on what you already have. Sometimes, however, you need to completely rebuild the foundations to really take things to the next level. Of course, rebuilding the foundations means not having a house for a few months.
Thatās exactly what happened with our third person animation setup ā an animator and I spent months building it from the ground up, and let me tell you, it was terrifying! Thankfully we stuck the landing, and the new foundation allowed us to make dozens of animation improvements like the one Guido showed off in a previous devblog.
This is the result of all that work. Here you see just one of 20 layers that can affect the character animation! They donāt all run at the same time, of course, but for a player that is moving while firing at you, the final pose you see can be the result of around 10 different layers of animation, all being mixed together.
Can you show off some of your work process and tell us what youāre doing? I spend a lot of time tweaking bots. One of the ways I do this is through a behaviour tree, a system that allows me to describe the way a bot will do something.
When a bot is given the mission to contest an objective, the behaviour for that might look something like this:
Letās say, I wanted to make sure bots healed themselves before fighting for an objective. I can make that happen by adding this new section at the left of the tree.
This was very quick, because I had already implemented these āIs At Full Healthā and āHeal Selfā nodes when making bots heal in a different situation. By making these modular pieces, I can easily get creative with bot behaviour.
Now, Iāll let you in on a secret: we have a hidden stat describing how emboldened a bot is. Which is to say in simpler terms, how 'dumb' they are. Assault bots are the dumbest (I will not elaborate). Itās also affected by many factors. For instance, every bot gets more emboldened during overtime. So letās make dumb bots ignore their bleeding and walk straight into the objective!
Tada! Done.
Of course, in reality (in the game) this is a small branch of a tree, and those colourful nodes hide other trees. (You can imagine how āPatrolAreaā alone might get complicated). The whole thing is huge!
Which other game dev/studio inspires you? Something I greatly appreciate about being a game developer is that I get to work with lots of extremely talented and creative people, and help make their vision come to life. The best games are made when all the different disciplines are working together towards a common goal.
As far as Iām concerned, no team has ever succeeded on that front as hard as Mobius Digital did with Outer Wilds. The story of that game isnāt just in the writing. Itās in the animation, in the music, in the textures, in the physics of the spaceship. An entire team firing on all cylinders. Awe inspiring stuff.
Favourite game atm? I donāt usually play āforever gamesā, instead I obsess over one game for a few weeks, then move to the next game on my embarrassingly large backlog.
That said, Iām really enjoying playing Heavenly Bodies in co-op mode. Accidentally and irreversibly hurling my partner into the void of space while reading the half NASA, half IKEA mission debrief is amazing fun. Trust me, disable all the assists. This is a game that is best enjoyed through suffering.
Anything else you wanna share? Working on animation has the benefit of experiencing the absolute best class of bugs in the medium: funny, non game breaking ones. Hereās a personal favourite.
Thatās it for now!
If youāre looking for fellow players, want to let us know of issues you encounter with the game or just want to chat and hangout, be sure to join our Discord!
You can no longer obtain Faction Activity Points through Siege.
Shipbuilding methods were improved.
When placing a Drydock, all materials required for Shipbuilding will now be consumed all at once.
Due to the changes in how the Drydock is placed, bundles that were used when upgrading a shipbuilding level will no longer be consumed.
Due to the improvements, the territory protection duration after placing a Drydock has been greatly decreased.
Clarified the details about offline Labor regeneration in Patron buff effect and Labor descriptions.
Offline Labor Regen Explanation
Offline Labor Regen does not restore Labor in real time when logged off. Instead, the system checks whether you are a Patron user or have a buff effect when you log in.
If you have a buff effect activated, then you recover the specified amount every 5 minutes when logged off, and if your buff effect has expired, you will not recover any.
Ā
Bug Fixes
Fixed the issue where you occasionally could not obtain any points for gathering at the Island of Abundance.
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Events
The October Hallowtide Festival has begun.
The Two Crowns and Solis Headlands become peace zones during the festival period.
You can move to the festival region through the Worldgate at Marianople, Austera, Diamond Shores, and Growlgate Isle.
Weāre delighted to announce that Season 11: Lights & Cameras releases October 19 on PC!
Available for free to all Year 3 Pass and 3-Year Anniversary Edition owners, this new Season will send you to Scandinavia, featuring two new vehicles and two new maps packed with the glorious sights and sounds of the Nordic countries. A free update featuring new trailers, new cranes, new flat-beds and a set of 10 new stickers will also be available for all players.
Local filmmakers have action scenes that need some heavy lifting, and youāve got just the trucks for the job. Deliver set-dressing, green-screens, and actors to their rightful place to help make the best movie of the year! When the cameras are off, you can head on over to the local villages and authorities to help renovate the region before the next winter season.
Two new vehicles are also arriving, the NEO Falcon 2000 and Burlak 6x6. The Falcon is the perfect choice for roaming the mountains and general exploring, all thanks to its exceptional ground clearance and versatile suspension. The Burlak is a much larger, powerful vehicle with scouting as its focus, taking a heavy-duty approach to moving up and around the maps. Use its small crane and flatbed options for rescuing or transporting, which help make it a reasonable all-rounder vehicle.
Season 11: Lights & Cameras releases October 19 on PC. Save money on all the content released since launch and beyond with the 2-Year and 3-Year Anniversary Editions. For more information, check out the gameās page on the Focus Store.
You can no longer obtain Faction Activity Points through Siege.
Shipbuilding methods were improved.
When placing a Drydock, all materials required for Shipbuilding will now be consumed all at once.
Due to the changes in how the Drydock is placed, bundles that were used when upgrading a shipbuilding level will no longer be consumed.
Due to the improvements, the territory protection duration after placing a Drydock has been greatly decreased.
Clarified the details about offline Labor regeneration in Patron buff effect and Labor descriptions.
Offline Labor Regen Explanation
Offline Labor Regen does not restore Labor in real time when logged off. Instead, the system checks whether you are a Patron user or have a buff effect when you log in.
If you have a buff effect activated, then you recover the specified amount every 5 minutes when logged off, and if your buff effect has expired, you will not recover any.
Ā
Bug Fixes
Fixed the issue where you occasionally could not obtain any points for gathering at the Island of Abundance.
Ā
Events
The October Hallowtide Festival has begun.
The Two Crowns and Solis Headlands become peace zones during the festival period.
You can move to the festival region through the Worldgate at Marianople, Austera, Diamond Shores, and Growlgate Isle.
Ā
Known Issues
There is an issue where some of the descriptions for "Tactful Life" are displayed in Korean.
Access Steam's BLACK STIGMA page through the link below, then press the "Request Access" button below the "Add to your wishlist" button to participate in the test.
Also, please press the "Add to your wishlist" button to be notified when the game is released!
2. Confirming your participation status
Once you have requested access to the playtest, you will receive an email from Steam when the test begins. You can also check your application status through the button on the store page.
Your application is complete if the "Request Access" button is not there.
Instructions for the game and authorization information will be provided in a separate announcement.
This year we have given both the House and the Lab a spook-tacular makeover that is sure to make you say boo-yah! It also wouldn't be Halloween without some candy that you can feed the Baby. No trick, all treat!
We have included two brand new Halloween themed outfits which can be found in-game right now!
The Baby can be dressed up as a creepy Clown but be warned his jokes might not be so funny!
Newt is also getting into the Halloween spirit quite literally and has made his own Ghost costume!
We have also made some quality of life changes and improved performance as well as squashed some creepy crawly bugs, including several softlocks that could occur. A full of list of changes and bug fixes can be seen below.
Changes:
Reagent orbs can now be dropped
Machine core can also now be dropped (after it has stabilised)
Improved startup messaging for first-time players
Improved handling of level streaming for seasonal content
Optimisations to reduce initial load times
Performance and stability improvements
Bug Fixes:
Fixed softlock preventing interaction with Newt during the Monster Chase
Fixed softlock caused by important objects becoming unreachable
Fixed softlock which could occur on interaction with the padlock in Pickman's Madness
Fixed issue preventing Foam Dart Gun bullets from spawning in The Laboratory
Fixed input lock which could occur on exiting the Toybox Menu
Fixed culling issue in the Basement when looking at the doorway from the Doctors doll workshop