Patch R.1.1.35 - 10/05/2023

Ranked Season 1
• Season 1 has commenced!
• Complete your win condition and complete the game to earn Elo.
• Rewards will be given at the end of Season 1 based off of your Season High Elo.
• Ranked requires 10 Ranked Practice games played to queue.

Daily Rotating Game Modes
• Added a daily rotating Game Mode that rotates between 8 different role lists and modifiers. 6 of these are brand new lists.

New Character
• Headless Horseman - Even the most esteemed Highway robbers avoid certain roads, lest they be beheaded

New Pet
• Jack-o'-lantern - Year after year, it's the same routine. But he never grows tired of a good shriek.

New House
• Pumpkin Palace - A spooky house for the spooky season.

New Decorations
• Sugar Rush Corner Decoration - Surely this will help you stay up all night.
• Pillory Corner Decoration - Who forgot to let Fred out?
• Trick or Treat Lawn Decoration - Are you willing to knock on the door?
• Pumpkin Trio Lawn Decoration - A trio of spooky pumpkins.
• Grim Guardian Lawn Decoration - A guardian befitting the Reaper.

Improvements
• The Create Party button is no longer accessed via the Play button. Instead it is found in the same menu as the Play button.
• Jester Silhouette - New Silhouette that can be seen on the role reveal screen and role card.
• Crusader Silhouette - New Silhouette that can be seen on the role reveal screen and role card.
• Trapper Silhouette - New Silhouette that can be seen on the role reveal screen and role card.
• Added a sound effect for when the Serial Killer gains a stack of Bloodthirst.
• Added a sound effect for when the Soul Collector collects a soul.
• Added a sound effect for when the Berserker upgrades his axe through a kill.
• Added a sound effect for when the Pirate successfully duels someone.

Bug Fixes
• Fixed the Doomsayer Doom Ability to not allow the Doomsayer to guess recently dead players.
• When swapping to the Map preview, the death animation preview will now reset.
• Gallows preview will no longer sometimes look like the character is swinging 'too far'.
• Gallows noose will no longer sometimes clip through the players head in Personalize.

Build #49 has been rolled out for Windows and Mac! The list of major changes are below:

• Improved onboarding experience from early player feedback.
  
• Fixed an issue where the wrong dog variant showed up in a certain cinematic.
  
• Improved camera control with the Z and X keys.
  
• Adjusted audio mix for multiple Animo vocalizations.
  
• Fires in the Azure Abyss no longer persist after the quest resets.
  
• Pickaxes are now found in the Azure Abyss.
  
• Smoother dialogue transitions for speaking characters.

Thank you for playing Little Learning Machines! Please look forward to future updates 💗⚡🤖

With this announcement we are happy to inform you that the multiplayer mode for Midnight Heist has been successfully tested. Therefore, the demo will get one last update before the EA release with all the adjustments and improvements we have made lately. Among them, the brand new multiplayer mode, an in-game guide on the tablet, new graphical improvements, hotkey binding for the gadgets, adjustments to the AI and adjustments to the hacking tasks.

With these changes, the demo becomes final for now. However, until the release on 10/25/2023, we plan to add more content that will expand and improve the gameplay experience. In addition, we will publish a roadmap in which we share planned content with you. We will continue to listen to feedback, ideas and suggestions to develop Midnight Heist together with you.

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We have also recently launched an official Midnight Heist Discord server, which you are welcome to join. We have set up channels there so that you can find people to play with. In addition, you can always find the latest news about the development and exchange information with each other. We would be happy if you would join the server and say hello!

Join our community Discord server

We are very excited about the release and hope to give you many fun hours with Midnight Heist.

Dan and Andreas

• Remove power coupler as no longer required.
  
• Cap enemy scaling.
  
• Increase med bay strength.
  
• Do not show entity base warning pop up more than once.
  
• Double corn effect on buff per step.
  
• Crops spawn multiple food items on harvest!
  
• Crops have chance to spawn seeds on harvest not use.
  
• Harvesting with full inventory will show full inventory, and not harvest and result in crop loss.
  
• Optimised base attack entity.
  
• Fixed turrets.
  
• Remove bogus inventory toggle key from crafting and correctly name crafting key bind.
  
• Drastically reduce crop seed fabricate time.
  
• Cannot mine with repair tool.
  
• Cannot jump off traci into space at start with concerted effort.
  
• Cannot build on traci.
  
• Fix possible null error when rapidly switch between hotbar slots and mashing fire.
  
• Correct product order for sensor 1.
  
• Remove physics debug (could resolve deck issues? Maybe?).
  
• Fix disappearing items after rapidly switching between slots, caused by clicking to use in same step as selecting or equipping to hotbar.

Ranked is here! Town of Salem 2's 1st ranked season has official begun. Deceive and deduce your way through your placement games and climb the ladder! This patch also comes with a whole host of new Halloween themed cosmetics, new role silhouettes, sounds, and bug fixes.

Ranked Season 1
• Season 1 has commenced!
• Complete your win condition and complete the game to earn Elo.
• Rewards will be given at the end of Season 1 based off of your Season High Elo.
• Ranked requires 10 Ranked Practice games played to queue.

Daily Rotating Game Modes
• Added a daily rotating Game Mode that rotates between 8 different role lists and modifiers. 6 of these are brand new lists.

New Character
• Headless Horseman - Even the most esteemed Highway robbers avoid certain roads, lest they be beheaded

New Pet
• Jack-o'-lantern - Year after year, it's the same routine. But he never grows tired of a good shriek.

New House
• Pumpkin Palace - A spooky house for the spooky season.

New Decorations
• Sugar Rush Corner Decoration - Surely this will help you stay up all night.
• Pillory Corner Decoration - Who forgot to let Fred out?
• Trick or Treat Lawn Decoration - Are you willing to knock on the door?
• Pumpkin Trio Lawn Decoration - A trio of spooky pumpkins.
• Grim Guardian Lawn Decoration - A guardian befitting the Reaper.

Improvements
• The Create Party button is no longer accessed via the Play button. Instead it is found in the same menu as the Play button.
• Jester Silhouette - New Silhouette that can be seen on the role reveal screen and role card.
• Crusader Silhouette - New Silhouette that can be seen on the role reveal screen and role card.
• Trapper Silhouette - New Silhouette that can be seen on the role reveal screen and role card.
• Added a sound effect for when the Serial Killer gains a stack of Bloodthirst.
• Added a sound effect for when the Soul Collector collects a soul.
• Added a sound effect for when the Berserker upgrades his axe through a kill.
• Added a sound effect for when the Pirate successfully duels someone.

Bug Fixes
• Fixed the Doomsayer Doom Ability to not allow the Doomsayer to guess recently dead players.
• When swapping to the Map preview, the death animation preview will now reset.
• Gallows preview will no longer sometimes look like the character is swinging 'too far'.
• Gallows noose will no longer sometimes clip through the players head in Personalize.

Thanks for sending us feedback on SinVR 2024.
Apparently some of the missing features were to show/hide the male character in PC mode which is not fully functional. You can find the show/hide male button on the sex position UI.
The other fix was reversing the camera zoom using mouse scroll. It was going to wrong way so we've fixed it in this build.
Thank you for all the feedback and looking forward to improving it farther with future updates.

OMNIFATE has been updated 1.0.0.1. This update brings the following bug fixes:


Navigation
- Fixed an issue where interacting with the space where Ker was after he joins your party would crash the game.

Gamepad
- Added ability to access certain easter eggs when playing with a gamepad.
- Added ability to speed up credits speed when playing with a gamepad. (press Y on a standard XInput controller to double credits speed)
- Added a certain thing to a certain easter egg.

Hey all BK Fans!

I know it's been quite lately so I just wanted to touch base with you guys and tell you our beloved mod is very much alive. Join me by the fire, won't you?



Development continues apace, albeit at a slower pace. This is because two of our dev members have had things come up in their personal lives that take precedence over their online lives. Despite that, the dev team has been busy. There is a small patch in the works, mainly concerned with bug-fixing. It should release sometime soon and when it does I'll post the announcement both here and on discord along with the patch notes.

But that's not the only thing that's in progress. There have been changes to the BK Mod Steam Forum, BK information is being collected and collated to improve player knowledge and understanding of the BK Mod and its systems, and I want your screenshots! There is one more thing in the works but I will save that for the next dev diary.


First you will see that there are three new BK Steam Subforums.
I've made some changes to the BK Mod steam forums. There are now three new subforums:

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1. Blitzkrieg Mod Patches
   
2. Beta Patches and Feedback
   
3. Bug Reporting and Technical Support

[/expand]
The first two sub-forums are incomplete now but when I am done with them, they'll have every patch or beta patch cross-posted into them and a thread that lists every patch and beta patch ever released. The bug-reporting and technical support sub-forum is self-explanatory. I'm doing this as part of one of my directives as dev communications specialist, to make the development of the Blitzkrieg Mod less opaque. That is, it will be easier to see the progression of patches, what was changed when, and why (if possible - many discord conversations that inspired dev patches are lost to the sands of time). In theory, this will help players and devs by answering typical questions related to patches or changes like "Why was X changed and when did that happen?". I expect that the beta sub-forum will become more busy with feedback in the future as all future BK betas get posted in it. As always, I'll be monitoring all these forums and will answer questions as best I can. If I can't answer the question, I'll find out the answer to the best of my ability.


I have a pet project that I've been working that was borne out of my frustration with having to go into Corsix or the game every time I wanted to know a piece of information whether it was how much a unit costed, its weapon stats, its build time, its veterancy bonuses etc, or wanted to compare its stats to any other unit in the game. I realized that I may not be only one who's frustrated by this and also that this barrier to knowledge of the actual stats of the game hamper discussion in the community. Much of dev time is wasted when they are asked to look up stats in Corsix for players who find it difficult to parse corsix or tedious to parse through patch notes. A lot of discussions often go nowhere when people argue about balance when they don't know the actual stats and argue about how things feel in game rather than how things actually are. When it comes to suggestions or proposed solutions to problems, this issue rears its ugly head again because players often suggest things that sound reasonable but are unrealistic or unintended when one considers the actual numbers behind things. I'm not saying this to criticize players but simply stating a fact. It's hard to propose realistic or concrete suggestions when one doesn't know what the numbers behind abilities or stats actually are.

For example, let's say a player has an issue when using the BAR-equipped rifleman squad's suppression ability on an enemy Volksgrenadier squad. He finds it ineffective or too weak for its 40 munition price. It feels like more often than not, it doesn't suppress well enough, if at all. Not knowing how the ability works or what it does number-wise, will cause someone to suggest changes based on feel rather than numbers. They'll suggest changes that will over-tune the ability or that may be completely unnecessary. "Unnecessary - what do you mean?", you ask. I mean that perhaps the player who has an issue with a rifleman squad's suppression ability doesn't know the actual numbers behind cover bonuses. We all know that you can't suppress a squad in a building (building cover) or a trench (trench cover), but did you know that green cover reduces suppression by 90%? If that player knew about cover bonuses, they might then understand they shouldn't use the BAR's suppression ability on enemy squads in green cover. And that is before one factors in received suppression buffs from any other factors such as Officer auras, veterancy bonuses, or doctrinal abilities!

In short, I'm working on a BK Mod wiki that eventually will have all the information you could want about BK Mod, its units, it's patches, various doctrinal abilities, etc. When I make more concrete progress on it I'll put in an update with a link. Here's an example below of some of what I have (it's out of date).

[expand type=Details][/expand]
I hope this helps alleviate your fears about BK's apparent lack of development. Chat again soon!

Wald

P.S. Send me your screenshots or post them in the community hub for a chance for them to appear as the next dev diary's cover image!

💥😮‍💨Steam Next Fest kicks off on Monday, October 9! Joining BOSS FIGHTERS has never been simpler: we'll enjoy a full week of UNRESTRICTED GAMEPLAY without any registration needed!

But, if you do decide to register, you'll have the chance to grab exclusive Boss or Weapon skins!🔥👀

Dive into our Medium article to learn more ⏩ https://link.medium.com/HkSvpLkMEDb

Hello everyone! I've been meaning to write this dev diary for quite some time and finally I feel like there is enough news to write a blog post :)

To give a quick summary at the beginning, the development of the game is going really great, but unfortunately I had to delay the demo for Steam Next Fest to February 2024. I've underestimated the amount of work needed to finish the core loop and the only reason for the delay is that I didn't have enough time to develop all the supporting features needed for the demo like the tutorial, audio, ui changes etc. On the good side, I did manage to finish the core loop which feels really fun so far (you'll be the judge of that of course)



So let's get into some details :)

I've spent most time trying to rework the research tree. It's a big part of 2 problems Tavern Master had:
1) Every playthrough feels the same because research tree is the same
2) There is no bigger goal in the game except going day by day earning as much money as possible

In order to improve that, I've replaced the research tree with a map of the kingdom where you're located. Since you're managing a blacksmith shop, you can influence events happening in the kingdom by providing weapons, tools, armor or something else. You can also help you kingdom expand either by force or diplomacy and in return receive certain benefits, bonuses, or materials.

For example, a nearby mine could ask you for new pickaxes, and in return allow you to excavate ores there which unlocks copper ore for you.

You will be progressing through the game by helping your kingdom basically :)




I've also streamlined the staff popup where you'll be able to drag&drop staff into certain roles. Each staff type will have different responsibilities, and you're job is to make sure the workshop is balanced. For example, a blacksmith can either craft items for racks, craft items for the kingdom map requests or work on designing new items. If you have too many blacksmiths designing, you'll be spending too much money on their salaries while racks will be empty and you won't be able to help your kingdom enough. On the other hand, if you're focusing just on production, but not on unlocking new items, you won't be able to fulfill certain requests.



There are some other not as important things finished:
- I've reworked the whole AI system and with hundred of hours testing, I haven't had a single employee get stuck. I'll work hard on maintaining that quality until the game is released :)
- Whole UI is getting reworked, you can already see parts of it in the screenshots
- There will be at least 3 times more character animations than in Tavern Master
- There are 8 different racks now which allows more customization

Next steps are to polish and balance first 2-3 hours of the game and finish all necessary things for the demo that I mentioned. I'm taking a 2 month break from the development of Blacksmith Master so I can work on a really ambitious Tavern Master update which will release before the 2 year anniversary of the game (November 16th). That will also help me to be more critical and objective about the game when I get back to it, because I'll have 2 months to have my thoughts about the game settle :)

Don't forget to join the Blacksmith Master Discord and please write feedback and thoughts in the comment! I'll respond to all of them. Sorry for delaying the demo, but I'd rather have something that I'm proud of in February than rush it for October and have lower quality feedback on the gameplay :)