Oct 17, 2023

Shadow of the Mad King 2023 Is Now Live!

Guild Wars 2 - Anet Richie

"There's a chill in the air and a bump in the night.
It's the season of ghosts and sensational frights.

Go carve a spooky pumpkin; get lost in a maze.
Ascend into madness—join the Halloween craze!

A clock tower to climb and candy corn to acquire.
When Mad King Thorn says, you'd best heed his desires!"

That's right: the Shadow of the Mad King festival begins today! This year, we have many ghoulish goodies to seek out and a brand-new mode for the Mad King's Clock Tower. You'll have three thrilling weeks (until November 7) to participate in the festivities and gobble up as much candy corn as you can stomach. Let's dive into the details, shall we?

New for 2023!

A new variant of the long-feared Mad King's Clock Tower jumping puzzle has appeared! Normally unavailable to visitors during maintenance, the Stopped Clock Tower is now open to guests looking for a more leisurely incarnation of the tower's daunting climb. Existing achievements have been updated to reflect which version of the clock tower they can be completed in, and new achievements have been added for you to conquer each variant.

The Wizard's Vault has new special objectives directing you toward all sorts of Halloween activities. Earn that astral acclaim and collect your rewards!

Atop the Stopped Clock Tower is a mysterious craftsraven who will help you craft four makeshift Paper Bag Helm Skins. Be the talk of the costume party with these emotive headpieces. Keep reading below for more fang-tastic seasonal goodies.

Where to Go

First, check your in-game mail for a letter from Magister Tassi containing an Invitation to the Mad Realm. Use this item to travel back and forth between Tyria and the Mad King's Labyrinth.
Lion's Arch is Tyria's Halloween celebration headquarters. Asura gate portals to Lion's Arch are available in major cities and can be used by any player who has purchased a Guild Wars 2 expansion or is at least level 35.

Players without access to Lion's Arch can travel to the Mad Realm from the Village of Shaemoor in Queensdale, the Village of Smokestead in Plains of Ashford, Snowlord's Gate in Wayfarer Foothills, the Village of Astorea in Caledon Forest, and Soren Draa in Metrica Province. These locations are outside each starting city's main gate. Run to the candy corn icon on your map and speak to a Lunatic Boatmaster guarding a haunted door, and they'll whisk you away to your choice of eerie activities.

Haunted doors will also appear in Kessex Hills and Gendarran Fields throughout the event. Interact with the doors to trick-or-treat!

What to Do

During Halloween, King Oswald Thorn's capricious spirit can manifest in Tyria—and Tyria's citizens can cross into Thorn's Mad Realm.

Lion's Arch

The city of Lion's Arch is transformed with scary decorations and a gloomy autumn glow! Every two hours, Mad King Thorn will gather his "subjects" (anyone within shouting distance) to play a game. Perform the emotes he commands you to—but only if he calls out, "Your Mad King says." If you do well, you'll receive keys to unlock the Mad King's Chest.

The Grand Piazza also features seasonal vendors and doors to Shadow of the Mad King activities.

The Mad Realm

Mad King's Labyrinth

Battle hordes of Halloween creatures, race your mounts, and trick-or-treat at haunted doors through the twists and turns of a macabre maze. It's a great way to gain experience for your characters and Trick-or-Treat Bags full of goodies, especially if you team up with other players to explore. Stay on your toes, though—powerful enemies like the Grand High Viscount of Candy Corn, the legendary Skeletal Lich, and the Labyrinthine Horror will make nougat of the unwary.

Mad King's Clock Tower

Hop to the top of a vicious timed jumping puzzle before the deadly miasma below makes its way to you. As mentioned above, there's also a new Stopped Clock Tower variant to explore!

Ascent to Madness

Face Mad King Thorn himself! This dungeon encounter is intended for players of all skill levels and can be entered from Lion's Arch.

Mad King's Raceway

Take your mounts out for a spin in time trials and races against other players. Springer, jackal, and roller beetle rentals are available if you need a steed.

Minigames

Speak to a Lunatic Boatmaster to participate in Reaper's Rumble or Lunatic Inquisition.

Rewards

Shadow of the Mad King activities award Trick-or-Treat Bags containing a vast selection of Halloween goods. The primary currency is candy corn, which can be traded to special vendors for minis, armor skins, recipes, and more.

Many unique rewards are obtained by completing achievements. You'll find information on the Shadow of the Mad King achievements and their rewards in your Hero panel under the Daily and Festivals categories.

New Armor, Weapons, and Decorations—Oh My!

If smoky and spiky is your style, complete the annual Halloween Rituals achievement to obtain the Clawing Shadow Greaves. If you missed last year's matching Clawing Shadow Gloves, fear not! You can find them for purchase from candy corn cob vendors.

You'll also earn your choice of weapons from the new Grim Machine set for completing the same annual Halloween Ritual achievement or the Weekly Halloween Festivities achievement. Collect them and let off some steam!

Be cautious when opening your Trick-or-Treat Bags, as three horrifying new weapons have been added to the Courtly Weapon Chests. The Sanctioned Executioner greatsword, Guided Executioner longbow, and Heralded Executioner warhorn can also be purchased from Sparking Stone in Lion's Arch.

There are also new Halloween-themed guild decorations, the Paper Bag Helm Skins mentioned above, and the long-awaited Mini Derlitz the Candy Raven!

We hope everyone has a bewitching Halloween season, and be sure to share your spookiest moments with us!

Check out the full release notes on the Guild Wars 2 forums.

Oct 17, 2023

Weekly Progress Report #86: August 2023

VoidBound - LonerPrime

We regularly update our timelines with some of the more "explicitly" NSFW content over at our Discord and Twitter.

Find us at:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CursedAtelier

Public Discord: https://discord.com/invite/tG7DKBa

Salutations Spacefarers,

What a week! STEAM's NextFest just culminated and had us drowning in so many great projects, it was riveting, to say the least. We explored so much and truly re-experienced how there is a big world of talent out there. Already looking forward to 2024 expo!

That being said, it's time to visit the familiar shores of VoidBound once more and talk about the latest news so, lets get going:

New concept assets were created this week for the upcoming Bounty Hunter quests, chief amongst them, Caly's target of interest: a Garumite(refer to the image attached). Inspired by a design of something humanoid but still distinctively alien, and not super friendly either, these guys are the very definition of "menacing".

Now, are they all bad to the bone or just misunderstood beings? Guess we'll find out more as the story develops further, including more design variations. Oh yea, they all look different with an array of "unique" packages down there ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

From the story side of things, major progress has been reported with the First Bounty Hunting Quest now tagged as written, edited and approved. With that, the writers have diverted their attention towards the next hunt's design, making sure this second hunt explores more of the city and the actual 'hunting' part of being a bounty hunter.

More on this in the coming few weeks.

Finally, the big one we've all been looking forward to: Quest log is now Fully Operational!!! Yes, no longer shall you be lost or blinded about what to do next. One click and all the useful information with regards to quests you have, quests you did, where to find the objective marker and so forth will be available to you immediately.

Unfortunately, deployment of the system in the near future is still out of the question as more optimization efforts are needed in regards to its navigation capability. Currently, thanks in large part due to the engine’s limitations, cycling through quests is inducing confusing effects, jumping randomly to unintended menu options. On the plus side though, we're already troubleshooting the root cause and are confident we'll solve the underlying issues by the time of our next patch gets released. So all we request is a bit more patience ;)

And that is all for this one. To all our fans who visited us during the fest, new and current, you have our infinite appreciation.

Thank you all for being with us and thank you more for reading thus far. We'll be back next week with more updates so, till then, take care and stay awesome.

Kind Regards,

Cursed-Atelier Team

Oct 17, 2023

Dev Diary for Oct— Spill the tea, what’s happening?

Cell to Singularity - Evolution Never Ends - lunch

Hi Universe Architects!

It’s been some time since we last made a dev diary. It’s the busiest we’ve been for a while, and we hope everyone is enjoying all of the updates we’ve been working hard on. Thank you for your continued feedback for these updates, especially to our beta community for replaying our test builds multiple times. We would not be able to do this without everyone’s enthusiasm and support.

Get your tea ready and let’s take the time to recap all the content that’s been out before we take a look into what’s coming up next. Warning: It’s a bit of a long read.

Take a sip as we take a step back

We released our second limited time event of the year Explore: Tea — A Journey of Serenity.
We are still figuring out our process for bringing more events to you at an increased cadence while also gauging topics that would resonate with our players. Although we aspire to incorporate a 3D garden for each Explore Event, the reality is that even a simplified version demands too much time for production. We currently face a dilemma between accommodating player demand and managing our internal team's bandwidth. We aim to deliver enjoyable experiences for our players, but when stacked up against potential delays, we'll need to review the necessity of Explore Event 3D gardens once more moving forward.

We’ve also received a lot of questions on why we chose tea as a topic. It is very different from what we’ve done in the past, and it was mainly an internal decision based on the team’s love for tea. In January, we created a poll asking our players what topics they would like us to pursue for future events. Out of the many topics that were suggested, tea was the only topic that seemed to gain widespread interest within the team. And so, what was once a conversation starter became a project that led to the creation of a new limited time event! It was led by a two person team with different members floating in as needed during its development. We even surprised players at PlayNYC (learn more: link) as Tea made its debut to the public as a beta feature.

If players are still curious about the process and want to learn more, our Discord ‘Let’s Play’ event during Tea’s launch can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/b0WxdtFoVwY

We hope players enjoyed Explore: Tea — A Journey of Serenity, and we will be using your feedback to help us improve future events.

Civilization wasn’t built in a day

The Dawn of Civilization is in full swing! With the release of the Stone Age Civilization update, we introduced seven new research nodes and four unique trophy nodes to the Main Simulation tree. Göbekli Tepe, Dog Domestication and Lascaux are three new prizes that appear in the Civilization Garden once unlocked from the Logit Store. Players will need to save up Logits and Darwinium in order to acquire these exclusive new items. We also added a new hidden achievement. Many players should have already found it. If not, it is tied to a special interaction with a certain canine companion.

You may notice that the Stone Age Garden is bursting with life! We’ve added animated characters and other decor to make the garden feel more complete. It doesn’t come without restrictions, though. With each new 3D model we add to the garden, it increases the size of the game app while also reducing the ability for older phones to enjoy the new content. As a result, the characters and environment went through multiple iterations to reduce its poly count so that the game can continue to grow. We are constantly optimizing our assets to ensure that our game requires less space and can be played on older phones.

As we go further into the Beyond

Discover strange and bizarre exoplanets as the simulation takes an alien twist with Beyond Episode 20: Strange Worlds taking the stage very soon. Follow Semblance as she explores strange solar systems to find an exoplanet that could support terrestrial life. Will she be successful? There will be five new exciting exoplanet generators based on recent NASA research to explore, with twelve Series II trait cards to boost the Beyond simulation.

At a technical level, every new episode of the Beyond requires us to rank up our 3D visualizations, and Episode 20 is no exception. In Episode 19, we added exoplanets, which required us to make planets independent of the generator that they were unlocked with. For Episode 20, we needed to flip that - make planets orbiting a star where the planet is the generator. A lot of surprising technical changes came out of that one small change. When you click on a star to focus on it, the camera needs to know to zoom in on the planet, not the star. The name that appears in the garden should also be the name of the star system (“Wasp 12”) rather than the name of the planet (“Wasp 12 b”). When you tap the “-” button to unfocus the generator, it needs to focus on the star in the system it is in. As we add fascinating new generators to the Beyond, Semblance isn’t the only one leveling up her simulation.

With the story of the Lives of Stars concluded, we’ve been exploring our branding to give the next episode a unique look and feel while still connecting it to the overall Beyond expansion. There were a lot of design favorites but ultimately we picked a direction that reflects the story’s progression. Do you have a favorite?

It’s the race towards discovery

We’ve made a lot of changes and progress towards the revamped leaderboard system. Some of it is very confusing and has broken along the way. We’re really grateful for our players' feedback as we polish this system. It’s unfortunate that some unexpected bugs popped up with each fix, many of which are tied to the complexities of developing a multiplayer system that affects the relationship of data between our server and the game.

Whenever we do beta tests for the leaderboard race, we are essentially testing whether the data feedback call between the server and the game is working as intended. Playtimes need to be accurately recorded to show the correct time passed to complete the race and earn rewards. Each tier is divided into a group of at most 15 players (after the most recent update). Players are grouped according to their tier rank as well as their place in the race.

For example, if you are a player who started the race on Day 2 of the event then you will be placed with other players who are also starting the race on Day 2. All of you are in the same tier rank too. Similarly, players who cheat will be grouped in the same tier with other cheaters. They will not be seen with non-cheaters. However, if a player follows someone who is a cheater, they will also appear in your list even if you are in a tier with non-cheaters.

We also test some of the profile and icon customizations we’ve added to ensure that they are working properly. We hope that this information gives a better understanding to our players on how the leaderboard race works. We admit that it is not perfect and we are iterating it constantly based on player feedback. We are getting there, and we appreciate your continued support.

We’ve been having a lot of discussions on how we can make the new leaderboard system integrated in other simulations with more improvements over time. We are even in talks about removing cheaters from the leaderboard race to prevent them from participating in the future. For now, we will continue reviewing player feedback and gauging excitement over this existing feature.

Dodos are back to haunt your simulation

Halloween is around the corner, and something supernatural has invaded the simulation once again. The dodos are back to haunt the simulation! Semblance needs help to capture these ghostly nuisances.

Since we’ve debuted the Dodo Ghost Hunt in 2022, we’ve received a lot of requests to bring back this fun and popular event, particularly for those who have missed its secret achievement. This year, with the revamp of the Civilization Garden, the Dodos have migrated to new locations and it will be up to the players to find their new hiding spots.

The Dodo Ghost Hunt will run from October 18 to November 8, 2023. Can you find all 66 dodos? 🦤

Fun fact— the Dodos have periodically escaped their graves and have run amuck during development over the past year. We’ve had to stamp them out a number of times and have wondered if they’ve become a bug or a feature. Ourgameishaunted

Metabit tuning continues to be a challenge

It’s been an eventful year so far. We've released more content than we’ve done in past years, but it’s also come with its difficulties. It should come as no surprise that balancing for Metabit production has been challenging.

We wanted to re-balance Metabit production since we planned to add more nodes and Logit prizes with the launch of the revamped Civilization update and more. But the main reason this became a bigger focus was due to the introduction of the Giant Squid Logit prize. An error in its curve exploded the game economy and caused players to finish the game faster. As a result, the game’s retention began to drop and we’ve been working hard to fix that. Unfortunately, we were not successful and our retention began to drop even more as the game became harder to play with the slow Metabit production. With the 5th Metabit tuning iteration we are able to see a small recovery in our retention, but only time can tell before we can determine if there was any meaningful impact.

Balancing of Metabit production is going to go through multiple iterations over time as we add more content. We'll be going beyond eight iterations from what we have initially stated in order to ensure that the game's economy is balanced. We are thankful for all the feedback we’ve received from our players as it helps us pivot in the right direction. It’s been a rough ride, and we thank you for your patience and continued support.

What’s coming up next?

Phew, that was a lot to review! If you've made it this far, thanks for reading along. As the year is coming to an end, we want to share an updated roadmap of everything we’ve accomplished. We are proud to say that we’ve fulfilled our aspirations and goals for the year and are excited for more to come. Coupled with a monthly dev diary, our future goal is to release two roadmap updates a year.

We are currently ahead of schedule as we have three Beyond ranks in development. There are also three updates planned to expand Civilization and its garden. We’ve just released the Explore: Tea — A Journey of Serenity limited time event, and we have another one currently in the works. It will be a great melody in our symphony of events. We also have other topics lined up and want to thank our players for always sending us suggestions.

That is all, everyone! Thank you again to all of our players, especially the beta community. We hope the sentiment is shared when we say that we listen to your feedback. Our game continues to improve and grow due to our players’ time and support for us. Keep an eye out as we announce the launch for Beyond Episode 20: Strange Worlds in the near future.

On Friday, October 20th from 1 - 2pm EST, we will be live on Twitch for another livestream. Join us as we talk more about the Civilization update, Beyond Episode 20, and plans for tuning the leaderboard system. A new Darwinium code will also be waiting for you to redeem.

Stay Cellular!
- The Cells Team