The much-awaited Steam Autumn Sale is here, together with the Steam Awards nominations, just as the winter chill is starting to creep up on us!
We're very excited to participate in the sale with a 33% OFF discount on the Cube Escape Collection!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1292940/Cube_Escape_Collection/

And with our continuous work to upgrade, preserve and bundle our Cube Escape chapters into the Cube Escape Collection in order to survive the end of the Flash Games era, we'd be very grateful if you would nominate our bundle for the Labor of Love Award!



And if you're still in a voting mood, we hope Underground Blossom can also make a stop among the nominees. So if you enjoyed your metro journey, consider nominating Underground Blossom for the Outstanding Story-Rich Game Award , or in any other category you may find suitable!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2291850/Underground_Blossom/

PS. All our Rusty Lake premium games are 33% OFF as part of the 🍂 Steam Autumn Fest 🍂 - just in time for you to enjoy an extended fall vacation at The Lake!

https://store.steampowered.com/developer/rustylake

[ANNOUNCEMENT]
- AC Turkish Lira prices have increased with the Steam exchange rate change. Since Steam has removed localized pricing, it will continue with the dollar exchange rate.

[GENERAL]
- Stun immunity rate reduced by half.
- Knockback immunity rate reduced by half.
- Now you can invite group to others by typing their nickname to friend-panel.

[RATES]
- Drop and gold rates on maps level 50 and above have been increased.
- The chance of Mystery Boxes has been increased.

[SYSTEM]
- Shiny monsters have been added to the game.
+ There is a very rare chance that a monsters will spawn as Shiny.
+ Shiny monsters can appear very rarely on all maps and can drop rare items such as SSR.

[BUG FIXES]
- Fixed the bug where social animations were not playing.
- Now the damage of boss meteor abilities will vary depending on your level.
- Fixed the issue where the meteor ability continues when the boss dies.

[ANTI-CHEAT]
- Bot detection system has been improved.

[MATCHMAKING ARENA]
- Penalty for leaving Matchmaking has been increased.
- Matchmaking tracking system has been improved.
- Some bugs in Matchmaking have been fixed.

[AC SHOP]
- Halloween costumes have been removed from the AC Shop.

- Voice Chat, after working with the new voice service provider we are hoping we have resolved issues regarding voice. The team will continue to monitor.
- Minor Bug Fixes

Please let us know if there is any feedback, we appreciate your patience.
https://gagglestudios.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

-------------------------------------------------------------------
We are aware that some players are having difficulties connecting to the new voice chat services. We are actively collaborating with our providers for a fix.
Rest assured, we're taking this seriously and won't stop until it's resolved.
If necessary, we'll roll back the recent upgrade to ensure smoother gameplay.
We apologize for any inconvenience caused – your experience matters most to us.

If you still need to contact support, please send an email with all of the relevant information (email, userid, description) to:
support@gaggle.fun or create a ticket through the website: https://gagglestudios.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

如果您遇到了错误或是账号相关的问题，请附上全部相关信息并发送邮件至：
cnsupport@gaggle.fun 或者通过该网站创建一张工单：https://gagglestudios.zendesk.com/hc/zh-cn/requests/new

0.22.3 (November 22)

New:
- Event cards are now able to stack together to avoid cluttering up the
right side-bar. This only occurs with similar types of event cards.
Clicking on a card will now open up the 'stack' instead of the individual
card. This just means that when >1 card of a type is opened you now have
arrows that you can cycle through each one.

- also added seasonal & video launch options since some players disliked the halloween changes
New launch options:

--enable-halloween, -s
--disable-halloween, -S
--enable-christmas, -c
--disable-christmas, -C
--disable-seasonal, -S
--disable-video, -V

Parameter styles can be mixed and POSIX style can be combined:
e.g., -sCV

Launch parameters can be specified when launching via CLI or by specifying
them in Steam's "Launch Options" for the game.

- added story tree Change army resource for easier adjustments of armies

Fixes:
- Fixed language change crash with chinese
- Fixed regression w/ army menu radial depth + other gui depth adjustments
- Fixed some HUD buttons not always spawning/despawning at correct times
- Fixed added some mising polish characters to several fonts
- Fixed regression causing tablet to sometimes render on top of battle units
- Fixed tutorial / campaign / special maps not resetting custom user name
- Fixed left-most skill tree card in hand unclickable
- Fixed case where tile's house could draw on top of neighbor's wall improperly
- Fixed region battles not always including castles
- Fixed incorrect rare wanderer facing direction
- Fixed construction on ports + builders on ports not rendering correctly
- Fixed a rare battle diplomatic crash when loading a game.
- Fixed bug where you get a message that you conquere an ally region when you did not.
- Fixed rare end-battle crash if loaded from save in campaign
- Fixed rare crash building after a region conquer
- Fixed Low quality 'build here' highlight interpolation artifacts
- Fixed problems with hovering tiles in battle mode
- Fixed placing baricades not blocking own unit for single turn
- Fixed hard-freeze w/ some specific skill-tree layouts
- Fixed rare case of dropping peasants in a different region
- Fixed 'broken arrow' showing even w/ extra range due to walls
- Fixed beggar popin + text color (in some cases) + font
- Fixed regression where animals not re-centering to tiles when peasants removed
- Fixed army 'waypoint flag' remaining if defeated by AI
- Fixed offset general placement hover highlight
- Fixed skill tree 'preview' card affecting skill alphas
- Fixed raiders that are created with story tree don't conquer regions.
- Fixed bug in get settings that could cause game issues related to game settings.
- Fixed bloodbrothers idle animation speeds
- Fixed general w/ lance shish kababbing own head
- Fixed peasants sometimes not properly updating after load / transition
- Fixed rendering depth issues w/ story book + click level
- Fixed animals w/ wolf not accounting missing peasant loss

Changes:
- peasants & dynamic tokens now partially scale up w/ view
- placing battle units stick to cursor instead of requiring drag
- force hourglass cursor until end-turn fade is dismissed
- Allow diplomacy when victory is "none". (for story editor)
- removed 'region belongs to' for sea regions
- adjusted story book to prevent blank / sparse final pages
- adjusted applied card icons to prevent overlaying over generals
- battle card presentation to use delta timing
- added editor button highlights for active tiles
- story mission improvements
- improvements to controller gameplay

Vote for being bad in FNAT! :happymemes:

It was very difficult back in the days.

I hope you all have a great day! <3

Hey, it’s Tymon here. Today, I come to you in a contemplative mood, as recently, I got a bit of time (yeah, I know, crazy right?) to sit down and take a look back at the year that has passed. Obviously, it’s not over yet, but I think it’s the right time to give a moment of attention to the huge amount of work we’ve done this year as a team to make Dying Light 2 Stay Human a better game for you. And we’re committed to at least 5 years of post-launch support, so there’s no slowing down!

We’ve just recently released Community Update #3 and judging by your comments, you seem to enjoy the content we put out there. Thank you for your feedback, by the way, it really helps a lot! Because of it, we have more clarity when it comes to adjusting the game. And, if you remember, 2023 started with a bang that was the Anniversary Update, when we introduced plenty of changes… let me grab a helpful image, because it sure was a lot:



We’ve also been busy with a new way to present our work to you: live streams. Each time was hugely stressful – I’m speaking for myself here, and also for my colleagues who performed live – but at the same time we were super happy to do something for you, especially as you react so favorably to us showing you what we do.

Since the anniversary, we haven’t stopped for a moment! Next came Gut Feeling Update, where we focused on increasing brutality and juiciness of our combat, but also added numerous other options, like Gear Transmog or Weapon Crafting. Below, you can see the before & after clip that takes “gut-wrenching” very literally:



Personally, I was the most excited about Good Night, Good Luck Update. On that occasion, we focused on increasing the physicality of our parkour – here a special thank you is in order to our Community Council as well as the content creators representation who tested this feature before the release in its beta stage and provided many valuable comments. Special shout out needs to go to Noviex, a long time player of Dying Light 2 Stay Human, influencer, and a true parkour expert, who always pushed us to achieve more in terms of traversal. Thank you!

But that wasn’t the end of it, as we went for a bold move and made the Dying Light 2 Stay Human nights even scarier, bringing back roaming volatiles and the dark and tense atmosphere that you loved in the first game. Obviously, the nights have become very scary now – I even heard some of you saying that they’re too scary – but isn’t that the whole deal with Dying Light? To feel the Volatiles’ breath on your neck?



The second half of the year was also interesting. After moving our bundles to the in-game store and the admittedly bumpy start of DL Points – still working on improving that, no worries – we focused on User Generated Content. For example, we further integrated mod.io, making the maps created by our modding community accessible from the main menu of the game. Right now, everybody can play those awesome (and sometimes unhinged) maps – not just on PC, but also on consoles and Steam Deck.

My personal favorite is the “Return to the Slums” (image below), a great, great take on the Slums map from the first Dying Light. My advice to you is to set the FOV to a narrow 53 (as was the default setting in the first game), put on your headphones, dim the lights… and soak in the superb atmosphere.



Just take a look here to see how it looks when our great Modding Community takes over our dev tools.

To make maps even cooler, we released various asset packs, for example from the first Dying Light or even from Dead Island – and we’re preparing more surprises in this vein!

Later, our Community Update #3 also caused quite a stir – read more about it here – but it’s definitely not the last thing we have coming this year!

Apart from the updates, events were also happening on the regular – I’ve counted around 25 in total this year. They are a neat way to welcome you back to the game and encourage you to check how Dying Light 2 Stay Human is changing for you. Some of those events were crossovers, with Dying Light coming together with world-renowned brands, such as The Walking Dead, PAYDAY 2, Vampire: The Masquerade, or the latest one, For Honor.



Wow. Looking back at all of this, I have to admit that even I didn’t fully realize how much content we added to the game this year. Time flies when you're having fun, huh? As I’ve mentioned, we’re not slowing down, but rather lining up some new surprises for you. The next point on the agenda is the upcoming update, which will be released sometime this winter. It’ll deliver the next portion of changes promised in the Sneak Peak.

I’d like to give thanks from the bottom of my heart to our developers for their work on evolving Dying Light 2 Stay Human into the game it is today. Your recognition is our best motivation, so if you’re enjoying the changes we've implemented, I’d like to use this opportunity and humbly ask you to support us in this year’s Steam Awards. We’re all very happy to be able to share our passion with you – it’s the reason we keep working on our game. And if you like what we’re doing with it, you might consider giving Dying Light 2 Stay Human a shout out in the Labor of Love category by nominating us or leaving a review. It’s reserved for games that receive long-time support from its developers, so I think it’s quite a good fit!


Thank you all for your attention and please remember that you can share your thoughts and feedback related to the Dev Blog on the reddit channel. Maybe you’d like us to address something specific using this format? Let us know!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2627460/Magical_Monstergirls_Academy/

Already at 5000 wishlists! We couldn't thank you enough for that milestone!

As a token of our gratitude, we discussed and decided to add more game to the game. How to unlock it? Just share the word and wishlist the game, easy as that. You can see our goals right there:




https://store.steampowered.com/app/2627460/Magical_Monstergirls_Academy/

Hello, travellers!

We're thrilled to invite you on an epic journey beyond borders, and it all begins right here in Ticket To Ride. Get ready for the grand event of the year, "Around the World with Ticket to Ride"!

Experience the thrill of global railway conquest. It's time to set new records, explore exciting routes, and become a real-life railway adventurer!

• Play the game on Steam and compete against fellow players to achieve the highest scores.
  
• Share a screenshot of your top score right here on Steam (minimum of 150 points).
  
• Don't want to travel alone? Mention a friend you'd love to embark on this adventure with, and you both could win a pass!

• 🎟️ Amtrak USA Rail Pass: For our players based in the United States.
  
• 🎫 Interrail Pass: For our international players.

The contest runs until December 10th. Winners will be revealed on December 11th.

So, what are you waiting for? The whistle has blown, and the engines are revving – hop on board now and seize your chance at embarking on a real-life railway adventure.

Good luck!

– Bella, Community Manager

*Terms and Conditions apply. Learn more about the contest here.

Hey everyone!!

If you've been following along on the Discord you may have been keeping track of some recent developments!

You might also have noticed some small updates recently containing mostly bugfixes, a lot of which are actually things I fixed for the next update but decided to already make available right now because they're so helpful!

So I thought it might be fun to make a series of news post development logs to keep everyone up-to-date on what I'm working on!

Namely, I'm working on:



If you've been keeping track of Zeepkist's version numbering you might realize we're currently still on Version 15, but Patch 66. That's quite a large patch number!

For a small history on Version 15, here's a couple of relatively big changes it contained:



- v15p0: Ctrl-Z
- v15p8: Purple neon & more block primitives
- v15p10: Fog + Glass Fixed
- v15p16: New spectator camera modes
- v15p25: Feather Forcefields



- v15p34: Server Update
- v15p35: More Server Update
- v15p36: More More Server Update
- v15p38: The Soap Update
- v15p55: Faster Startup Loading



All that while I'd been planning the Zeepkist v16 update, constantly just-not-getting-to-it. But now that's about to change!

Zeepkist v16 will be a big update, and I intend for it to lift Zeepkist out of "Alpha" and into "Beta". I'm planning to bump up the price of Zeepkist as well, seeing as Zeepkist today is a very very different game than it was back when Zeepkist v1 first launched.

So, time for the devlog! The first part will be about FMOD.



There's one big thing that makes Zeepkist still feel a little bit "in-development", and it's the fact that Zeepkist's sound is quite lacking.

There's no music in-game, except from the main menu, there's only a handful of sound effects, and everything combined makes the whole soundscape feel really unfinished. (And Zeepkist by extension).

The why of that is two-part:

- Making sound effects and music is hard
- Actually implementing sound effects was also hard

The first makes sense: Recording clean audio isn't easy, finding the right sounds isn't easy, and making music isn't easy. This doesn't need a lot of explanation, but it's also something that can be overcome with effort, creativity, and a bunch of microphones.

The second one is more complex, and it boils down to one crucial flaw within Unity:
Unity only supports one sound listener.

This means that 3D sound can only be interpreted from one 3D location. Which is fine if you have a game with one local player. However Zeepkist supports 4-player split-screen, which means Zeepkist needs to support 4 different audio listeners.

My solution for this was a wholly custom sound framework that would calculate the distance between sound events and player cameras, and interpolate the sound's volume from that.



It works, but it's completely unscalable.

Every single new sound I added required me to dive into the codebase to manually add API endpoints to my audio system.



What this meant was that any time I had to add a sound, it came with a huge amount of busiwork that really discouraged me from even starting on it. On top of that, I was planning to switch to a better system down the line anyway, so any effort I would put into it would go to waste.

And that's not even to mention complex sound effects such as changing wind volume and pitch based on Zeepkist velocity, which took even more work and tweaking and effort.



With v16, I'm finally upgrading to the better system I'd been planning to switch to all that time.

FMOD!



FMOD is a third party audio framework which completely bypasses Unity's inbuilt system, and comes with a fully-fledged Digital Audio Workstation designed specifically for videogames.

It's used by small indies and big studios alike, and just about everyone I talk about it has nothing but praise for it.



FMOD also includes something they call "parameters", which are values that can be changed from in-game, and changes how the sound framework plays sounds.

For instance, the "wind" sound effect has a parameter called "speed", which is tied to sound volume and pitch all controlled from the comfort of FMOD itself. I don't have to code a single line of code for it, everything happens inside of FMOD and I just need to click and drag some things.

Another thing I love is the "multi-track event" or something like that. What it means is that I can assign multiple audio source files to a single audio event. From Zeepkist I can simply say "Hey FMOD play me a collision!" and then FMOD randomly picks one of the collision sound effects to play for me.

Again, zero programming required. It makes audio work blazingly fast.



It also has a complete mixer-routing system in-place which allows me to assign audio events to specific groups which can have their volumes individually adjusted. Again all from inside FMOD without a line of code in sight.

The only code I type is "FMOD please do X or Y" and the rest happens automatically.



Needless to say this whole thing makes it a LOT easier to add sound effects to Zeepkist, and shifts the entire burden to recording the sound effects themselves. It's basically a 50% decrease in effort at this point, and makes the whole game audio thing a lot nicer to work with.

I'm very excited to be using this a lot more :)



That's it for this devlog!! I hope you enjoyed the little behind-the-scenes insight and I hope all of you are as excited for Zeepkist Version 16 as I am!!

If you want to be even more up to date on Zeepkist development, you can join the Discord!

Happy Zeepkisting!!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2627460/Magical_Monstergirls_Academy/

Already at 5000 wishlists! We couldn't thank you enough for that milestone!

As a token of our gratitude, we discussed and decided to add more game to the game. How to unlock it? Just share the word and wishlist the game, easy as that. You can see our goals right there:




https://store.steampowered.com/app/2627460/Magical_Monstergirls_Academy/