The weapon descriptions now all show their damage in the description, like the skill descriptions of the weapons already did. Additionally, the military instructor, Banz, hands out a damage type manual in the training program in the early game. This key item explains the different damage types in reference to the armor stat and additional armor resistances.
I hope you are all doing well! As I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve been on a little bit of a break while I got married, went on my honeymoon, and moved a couple thousand miles from my original home in Maine. I’m finally back into the swing of things and have my development setup ready to go.
Before I jump into the main subject of this post, here are a few photos of the beautiful views of my honeymoon on the Maine coast and in Acadia National Park:
Okay, back to Battle Map Studio. In this post I wanted to talk about the current state of this project and my plans for its future.
Past & Present Situation
Since its inception, Battle Map Studio has always been a side-project of mine that I’ve self-funded through my work as a contract software developer building in-space construction software. As much as I wish I could spend 100% of my time on this project, it has not been financially successful enough to allow me to work on it full time. While I intend to continue development just as before, the new projects I’ve taken on for funding may take more of my time. Okay, that being said, let’s talk about my plans for the future.
Future
My general goal for Battle Map Studio has been for it to be a fun and simple map editor and RPG facilitator. That is still my goal. In the past, I’ve spent most of my time building tools and features, which is good. But, I haven’t focused much time displaying how to leverage those tools and features to build and play a full encounter, for example. While I have put together a wiki, maps, and video tutorials, there still appears to be considerable friction between players and building a fun map or playing a campaign.
Now that you have a general understanding of the past, present, and future of Battle Map Studio, I’ll briefly touch on some areas I plan to focus on:
Editing tools: better in-app instructions & tips, voxel editing, and fully-integrated Ultraleap hand tracking.
RPG play: easier multiplayer setup, improved RPG tools and features for players and DM’s,
Content: scenario setup and map building videos, more example maps, and new props and characters.
So . . . what’s next?
In the near future, I will be taking a little time to explore pain points, clean up the Battle Map Studio project files, and prepare my implementation plan for the future. I may also push a small patch pretty soon fixing a few bugs and updating a few backend packages.
In the meantime, if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback about the future of Battle Map Studio, I would love to chat! Your participation in discussions is immensely helpful. I encourage you to send me a DM or chat on the Battle Map Studio Discord server if you’d like to share anything.
Thank you to everyone who attended last week’s Q&A event and provided feedback, both during the stream and afterwards. We continue to be humbled by the countless encouraging words and constructive feedback you have shared. In response to this, we have a few important announcements to make as part of today's patch notes.
Community Feedback
[h4]Vestiges in NG+[/h4] We hear you. And have decided to roll out some fundamental changes to ensure everyone continues to enjoy the NG+ experience, including both those who have relished the no-vestige challenge and those who would rather they were still present throughout the world.
From today's patch onward, now when you complete your initial playthrough, you will be presented with a new option before embarking on your next runthrough; you can either progress directly to the next consecutive NG (i.e if you’ve just completed NG+1, you would move onto NG+2), or you can replay the current NG at the same difficulty, albeit retaining your character, items and progression, but resetting the entire world, including NPCs and questlines. This will allow trophy hunters and completionists to seek out any outstanding tasks without having to contend with increased difficulty, should they so choose.
A further patch this coming Thursday will see further updates made to the NG+ mode; instead of removing all vestiges (as it does currently), NG+1 will only see a few disappear while keeping the key locations intact. In NG+2, a few more will disappear, and then in NG+3 all but the main HUB (Skyrest Bridge) and Adyr's Shrine vestige will disappear. This way, our initial vision remains intact but is more of a gradual adaptation, awaiting those who seek increasing levels of challenge.
Lastly, as a follow up to the popular announcement made during last week’s stream, we can confirm we have started designing the "NG+ modifier system", allowing players to fully customize their NG+ experience, whether that’s retaining all vestiges, keeping just a few, or removing them completely. It will also include other fun modifiers like a "hardcore" mode (1 death = permadeath), item randomizers, enemy randomizers, etc. The feature set is yet to be fully defined, but our current intention is to release the modifier system before the end of the year.
[h4]Enemy Density[/h4] Today as a means of helping with enemy density, we're improving our 'leashing' system, further limiting how far enemies will pursue players from their spawn point. This helps prevent large crowds of enemies from relentlessly pursuing the player when rushing through a level.
We aim to have further refinements in Thursday’s patch, including reducing the number of enemies present in areas where players most struggle. These enemies will be removed in your initial playthrough, but will remain in NG+, in keeping with the more challenging experience players are seeking.
Additionally, we are going to tweak some crowd behaviors so enemies will not swarm players as often; multiple enemies will no longer land hits at the same time,while enemies will also be a little less aggressive when swarming the player in greater numbers.
[h4]Crossplay[/h4] As we explained in the Q&A stream, we are targeting to deploy this ASAP for all platforms, but we want to ensure certain GPU stability levels for PC players before this happens.
We are pleased to confirm we are activating crossplay on consoles this coming Monday, with a plan to activate it on ALL platforms this coming Thursday.
[h4]Performance & Stability[/h4] Our constant efforts for improved GPU stability are paying off, and we see that right now, the numbers have been reduced drastically from launch, to less than one third of what they were day one, yet still affecting 4% of our players each hour.
We are diligently addressing the remaining 0.28% of crashes stemming from game code, while also collaborating closely with NVIDIA, AMD, and Epic to resolve any outstanding issues reported by players through Sentry.
We have a number of key improvements rolling out between today and Thursday that will drive those numbers even lower.
[h4]Progression Loss[/h4] For those players who have lost level progression, either through corrupted saves or due to the co-op related issue in v.1.1.215, please know we are working diligently on a solution for you.
We're setting up a team you can send your corrupted saves/downgraded characters to, which will respond by providing your saves with the required vigor to restore characters up to the level they were before the glitch.
Those affected by the corrupted save file, please follow the steps below:
Create your new character
Send your new character save*, the name of that character, and the level you need restored, to support@cigames.com.
We’ll send you back your save, with enough vigor skulls to reach the same level. You will need to restart your playthrough, but should be able to restore your progress very quickly with your high-level character.
Those affected by the co-op savegame glitch on v.1.1.215, please follow the steps below:
Send your affected character save*, the name of that character, and the level you need restored, to support@cigames.com.
We’ll send you back your save, with enough vigor skulls to reach the same level.
*Your character saves are located at %USERPROFILE%/AppData/Local/LOTF2/Saved/SaveGames
v.1.1.224 Patch Notes
[h4]NG+[/h4]
Added a new NG+ option that resets the game world, allowing you to restart with your current character level in the same world.
[h4]Enemy Density[/h4]
We've improved the leashing system where enemies will stop pursuing you after a certain distance (varies by situation). This prevents overwhelming crowds of enemies if you rush through a map section.
[h4]Visuals[/h4]
Fixed fog card artifacts in locations like the Manse of the Hallowed Brothers chapterhouse when Frame Generation was enabled.
In Light we Walk.
All virtual photographies in this post are courtesy of Spectral
Until now, in order to recover the health of a damaged unit, it was necessary to rest without performing any action, This condition has been eliminated, and units will regain strength regardless of whether or not they have taken any action.
When "automatic selection" is used to cultivate farmland, etc., the unit with reduced health will be selected.
"Besides drawing and shooting what else can I expect in this game?" That's a good question!
SHOPS Two types of currency exist in Iglacia, one that gets dropped from enemies, geodes, and one that gets dropped from the final boss, dragon fangs. Two types of shops come with these currencies:
Geodes allow you to change your starter crystal which can give you a stat boost and change the color of your crystal!
Dragon fangs allow you to buy from the potion shop, which gives you a boost to stats that aren't found from regular upgrades in runs.
SKINS There are 50 difficulties to be beaten in Iglacia, and for every 10 difficulties beaten, a new skin is unlocked for your penguin. If you've ever dreamt of playing as a pink penguin fighting dragons, this might be the game for you!
MODIFIERS Modifiers are unlocked after you've reached difficulty 3, and these can help spice up your runs. There are 11 total modifiers, with the last modifier having the effects of all previous modifiers. These can alter the size of your lines, rotate your lines, make enemies bigger, or even give you a new friend for your runs!
MINIBOSSES In your runs, you can expect to encounter minibosses that spawn in 5-minute intervals. Beating 3 minibosses in one run allows you to move on to the next difficulty, and also rewards you with a handsome amount of geodes.
EVENTS Events start at the 2.5-minute mark and repeat every 5 minutes. 4 Types of events exist and upon completing them, you get rewarded with experience and geodes!
FINAL BOSS Frojsa the Ice Dragon is a secret boss and is also considered the "final" boss. To get to Frojsa, the player has to open the door found in runs after the starter difficulty. Opening the door requires you to complete a set of 3 secret events twice, once before the third miniboss is defeated and again after the third miniboss is defeated.
Hopefully, this has answered some of your questions regarding Iglacia. You can expect a full release in early November with the price being $2.99 as well as a discount at launch.
