Since the release of Forza Motorsport and Update 1.0
Forza Motorsport Update 3 is almost here! Master the iconic Hockenheim track, featuring 3 unique layouts for you to race, and several Spotlight cars that are ready to be put to the test in the Career Mode Contemporary Tour, new Featured Multiplayer series and Rivals events.

Update 3 will be live in the game for 5 weeks before Update 4 releases in mid-January.


Update 3 will be available to download on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PCs and Steam starting early next week. Live content will begin to light up across the Career, Featured Multiplayer and Rivals from December 14, 2023.


New fixes coming in Update 3 will continue to improve the overall stability and performance of the game, alleviating some of the issues we're seeing players report most frequently on our community channels. The team is constantly hard at work on bugs, some of which are not immediately visible to players but are critical for game stability for all players.

Below you can find the highlights of what will be fixed or improved upon in Update 3. We’ll share the full release notes next week on the Forza Support website once the update rolls out.

• Fixed issue in which the Driver Level visually appeared to reset to Level 1 after downloading Update 2 and entering Test Drive in Free Play.
  
• Rebalanced the impact on front and rear downforce when being drafted by another car.
  
• Fixed issue causing custom wheel input layouts to reset to their default settings after relaunching the game with both a controller and steering wheel connected to the PC or console.
  Editor's Note: While we intended to release this improvement as part of Update 3, we have realized that additional time to implement and test the fix is required. It will instead be introduced to Forza Motorsport in a future update.
  
• Fixed issue which allowed players to sell their Builders Cup reward cars, preventing them from reobtaining the cars and completing their associated Reward Showcases.

We continue to put a focus on raising our overall quality on PC, as we know we have more work to do there. Here are some of the PC-specific improvements coming in Update 3:

• Stability and performance are improved on lower spec PCs.
  
• Fixed various random crashes in multiplayer races specifically on PCs with AMD GPUs.
  
• Reduced the occurrence of a bug where the track or other objects becomes invisible while racing.

We’ve also introduced new options in the Screen Narrator section of the Accessibility settings menu to narrate your race position and driver names ahead and behind you.



Known for its long straights and ultra-narrow final sector, Hockenheim is one of the great European tracks and has seen many layout changes since its introduction in the 1930s, the last of which being designed by Hermann Tilke in 2002.


Forza Motorsport has 3 Hockenheim track layouts available for you to play across Career Mode, Multiplayer, Free Play and Rivals. Set your fastest laps on the 2.8-mile Full Circuit, the 2.3-mile National Circuit and the 1.6-mile Short Circuit. Master all 3 layouts using your favorite car builds in Time Attack with leaderboards available for all car classes in the game.


Level up and suit up for the grid! Forza Motorsport Update 3 introduces 33 new driver suits to the Driver Customization menu. Groups of suits will unlock at Driver Level milestones 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100. Level up and unlock some unique looks that you can use to show up to the grid in style.


If you’ve already surpassed these Driver Levels, all the new suits will be retroactively unlocked for you once the update is available. Please note, a game restart may be required for all suits to be downloaded and unlocked.


Experience cutting-edge performance and innovation with unquestionably modern cars in the Contemporary Tour.


The new Featured Tour begins with Italian Ingenuity, a series celebrating cars blending handcrafted beauty at extraordinary speed. From there you will experience the redefinition of powertrains as the potential of hybridization is geared towards performance rather than economy in the Hybrid Ferocity series.

In the following week, celebrate the wonders of modern aerodynamics in the Tip of The Spear series and race cars that have spent as much time in wind tunnels as state-of-the-art aircraft. Finally, conclude your journey with a modern marvel in the Valkyrie Challenge, a car which has pushed the boundaries of car design to the absolute edge.


Contemporary Tour series do not have to be completed in a particular week – you have until January 31, 2024, to finish this latest Featured Tour.


Complete all 4 series in the Contemporary Tour to unlock the 6-liter V12, track-focused 2022 Pagani Huayra R, hand-built with a carbon fiber construction.


With each update to Forza Motorsport, the Open Tour gets refreshed with new events and a new reward car.


Open Tour is where you can continue the journey of your favorite cars. Cars that you’ve already built in a different Builders Cup series can be further levelled up and upgraded in the Open Tour.

In Update 3, the Open Tour will see you bring your favorite cars to take on iconic British marques. Drivatars will be using cars from Aston Martin, Jaguar, Lotus, and Mini. You are not restricted to any of these manufacturers, so you can compete with the cars you enjoy the most.


All 4 refreshed Open Tour series (C, B, A, S) will be available on December 14. Complete all 4 series before January 18, 2024, to unlock the 2015 Mclaren 650S.


Here’s a look at the Featured Multiplayer calendar for Update 3:



The 3-Eleven is an open-cockpit, mid-engine screamer that exemplifies Lotus founder Colin Chapman’s mantra “simplify, then add lightness.”


The 1970s Golden Era of formula racing brought iconic wings and aerodynamic effects to help drivers control an escalating horsepower war between teams.



GTP Group C cars were at the pinnacle of endurance racing design in the 1980s and 90s, combining fuel saving aerodynamics with enormous horsepower that set speed records still standing today.


The popular MX5 ‘94 version of the best-selling Mazda Miata is perfectly balanced to handle the most demanding road courses with the speed and agility of cars costing much, much more.



Reignite Le Mans’ greatest rivalries racing the most recognizable, most dominant cars of the 1960s and early 70s.


Challenge your skills across 4 new Featured Rivals highlighting a Spotlight car every week, as well as a special event on Hockenheim Full Circuit featuring the 2021 Mercedes-AMG ONE. This performance hybrid is the ideal car to take on the long straights at Hockenheim as it produces beyond 1,000 horsepower at a maximum speed of over 350 km/h (217 miles).


Meanwhile if you have VIP Membership, check out the 2016 Mercedes-AMG C 63 S Coupé Forza Edition at Kyalami GP Circuit.

Update 3 also means the beginning of Stage 2 of the Logitech McLaren G Challenge. Sign up at Discord.gg/LogitechG to qualify for prizes, including a chance to win a VIP racing experience with McLaren!


Once registered, set your fastest laps at Hakone in the 2021 McLaren 765LT Coupe. The top drivers per region advance to the semifinals in February 2024.

Here’s the Forza Motorsport Rivals calendar for Update 3:




Whether you’re racing at Hockenheim, playing the Contemporary Tour with the new Spotlight cars, or continuing to build your favorites in the Open Tour, we’re excited for you to discover everything Update 3 brings to Forza Motorsport starting on December 12. Remember you can share your feedback about future cars, tracks and features on our official Forza Suggestions Hub.

- SADF Infantry now automatically repatriate when entering a Base inside SWA and are at the end of their conscription cycle
- UNITA Mechanized / Transport unit artwork wired in
- UNITA starts each new game with a Ural Truck already in Jamba (HQ)
- Hotkey 'Ctrl' shortcut to activate the Intel and Tracking overlay in the Tactical game view
- Updated Manual

Bug fixing

WIP of new combat

Combat has been in development for 6+ months. 90% of our resources are focused on it: Mark, Josh, Michel, Tyler, Zach, Jonathan, Jessi, Nolan, and Rubi.

We’re nearing the end of Combat. The pieces are coming together. It’s all working. It’s been real tough to pull this off but it looks like the results will be worth it. Here’s hoping we don’t screw it up with bad tuning! Meaning, we want to ship as soon as we can, but if the tuning is off “it’s bad forever”, so we don’t want to do that.

The major Combat Work:

• Define combat data in some sort of easy to use way (JSON) ✅
  
• Make and cast spells ✅
  
• UI - with tooltips and combat log updates based on the data ✅
  
• Status buffs ✅
  
• Turn system for player and enemies ✅
  
• Enemy actions and abilities - Working on it

I’m pretty confident we will announce a release date later this week!


This past week my schedule was totally consumed by employee reviews. The last one is today. This week, I return to the Dynamic Quest prototype.

Don’t know what I’m talking about?

It’s essentially using the simulator and NPC goals to generate interesting quests. The goal for Archmage was to have the game be a GM with the ability to create infinite quests.

Nolan and I are working on it. The first part of Dynamic Quest generation is coming as part of Update #3 Exploration.


It’s important to do both BIG things and smaller things simultaneously. A challenge in project management. Phil and Daniel2 are working on these improvements for this Thursday’s patch:

• NPC: Dialogue: When a new Topic (Person, Location, Quest Object) appears in text, highlight it. This is really hard, which is why we didn’t do it yet. We’re close to being able to do it.
  
• Tied to the above, make these new Subject topic options automatically appear without requiring you to click “Tell me more about…”
  
• NPC: Dialogue: we’re fixing the ordering of the options to make more sense. It will display in this order now:
  
  
  • Quest related
    
  • Service related
    
  • Good (compliments, flatter, etc)
    
  • Neutral (How are you?)
    
  • Mean (Insult, Kick in the Nuts)
    
  • General Questions: Tell me more…
    
  • Leave
• Flatter now shows a tooltip for difficulty

These posts are intended as an inside glimpse into the studio. So some might find this interesting and/or entertaining…



Couple weeks back I had some time off. I used to play WoW from 2005-2010. Recent work on the Dynamic Quests got me thinking about my favorite quests in Westfall at Sentinel Hill (Alliance). I decided to fire up WoW Classic and play it again… you know… for research.

Once the spiraling camera of the intro sequence started all the sweet warm memories came flooding in. It was every bit as good as I remembered! A video game is like a time machine, it brought me back to remembering simpler times, before kids, before moving to rural northern Ontario… I was in heaven, playing a game I sudden realized, I still love.

I leveled and got to Sentinel Hill (15) and kept copious screenshots and notes for Nolan and I.

Mission accomplished.

But… maybe just one more level….

I shared my experience with the team just as an FYI. Some of our team members were only 5 years old when WoW came out. I wouldn’t want to inflect 2004 3D graphics on any of them.

Yet, one by one, people started signing up to WoW Classic and playing with me… First Tyler, then Mark, then James, then Zach. Then Zach’s wife, and now James’ wife is considering jumping in. Phil is on the fence. I predict he’ll cave soon after Combat ships!

That’s 6 of us now all playing a 20 year old game in off hours… we just ran Deadmines last night (first Alliance Dungeon Instance) and it was awesome.

We finishing up the employee reviews today and the fact that we enjoy working together all day, then exploring Azeroth in the evening together is a sign the team morale is real healthy. And a healthy sustainable team is what we need to finish Archmage Rises right.

Thank you for the privilege of making this game for you!

Howdy!

Changes:
+ Crossbow shoots 20% farther
+ Sandstorm visual effects now match map theme colors

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed Ed's (The Balloon Pilot) festive hat being visible to the Worm. (oops!)

Hi all!

I'm excited to share the latest updates with you, but before diving in, a quick personal note: I'm about to become a proud parent - any day now! This means this will be my last update for a little while. Thank you for your understanding.

Following the release of Aron's Adventure Magic Reborn, I've received insightful bug reports and constructive criticism. Your feedback has been awesome, and I've focused on addressing these issues for this update.

Your involvement has been amazing - thanks to your quick feedback, some bugs that eluded me for weeks were fixed in minutes. A huge thank you for helping make Aron's Adventure the best it can be!

Now, let's dive into the patch notes!



The community and myself noticed limited opportunities for Aron to perform combos, often needing quick dodges to avoid damage. Thus, I've completely redesigned the combat manager and made additional changes for a smoother experience.

Enemies targeting Aron are now queued, with preference for those not currently under attack. This change should simplify targeting in group fights and enhance the overall combat dynamics.

Since the combat manager was one of the first things added to the game I could see this change have a big positive impact on the game in general and also resolve some issues with AI not knowing if they can attack.

Changes to stun-lock.
Can now stunlock enemies longer

• Challenge: 1.1s From 0.8s
  
• Adventure: 1.6s From 1.5s
  
• Story: 4.3s From 4.0s

An additional Delay is added if a Recent hit was a critical hit on the enemy:

• Challenge/Adventure: 0.5s
  
• Story: 1.0s

This combination feels a lot better without it getting awkward long on non-story difficulties. (story difficulty can get a little long but that's what the difficulty is for)


Four New enemies join the fight, these new enemies feature new move sets and can be found all throughout Elor. These were added to add more variety to encounters and to alleviate the more common stronger enemies to create more variety.


Changes:

• Re-balanced the ranged melee attack.
  
• Re-balanced the heavy attacks. (Slower weapons will get a less dramatic damage multiplier since their base damage is higher)
  
• Controller: Swapped the default buttons for Attack and Interact on controller. (This is how I played myself and I find the original one frustrating to use, you can revert this in the binding menu)
  
• Player Castle: Added lanterns throughout the castle that light up at night.
  
• Rive: Increased spawn distance of certain foliage.
  
• Rive: Fixed up some bad textures on rocks in the environment.
  
• Dragon Valley: Fixed a camp trigger bug that would happen when you load a save.
  
• Shadow's Edge: Made the stealth section a little easier.

Bug fixes & Optimizations:

• Bugfix: Fixed a rare issue that would break initial movement when playing in Rive. (Happened with cloud data save)
  
• Bugfix: Fixed a bug where you could open menus when in dialogue.
  
• Bugfix: Removed the double "_" for NG+ save games. (Sorry if this causes additional auto-saves for you)
  
• Bugfix: Fixed a bug in Dungeon 2 where puzzle assist audio could sometimes play when loading a save-file.
  
• Bugfix: Removed foliage in walls in Shadow's Edge.
  
• Bugfix: When playing on a different device with a lower resolution, the game will automatically set the resolution to the highest possible on the screen. (Mostly there to solve an issue I had on steamdeck)
  
• Bugfix: Enemies are now killed as well if you defeat the witch in the castle level from the demo.
  
• Bugfix: Prevent footsteps from playing after AI died for big orc. (And new AI)
  
• Bugfix: Spamming the jump button when falling with a mount would allow you to walk in the air.
  
• Bugfix: Hopefully resolved an issues where certain progression would be reset on level travel.
  
• Optimization: Rive, Shadow's Edge, Dragon Valley. All received foliage optimizations and memory optimizations for the landscape. Tried to get away with as much as possible without affecting the visible play-space.

Thank you again for your continuous support and feedback. ːsteamhappyː

This update has taken a little while to get right but here it is!

New Load Out Screen is now fully functional and looks like this...



Hardpoint options are no longer aligned with the ground so the view point has been moved down for a more "dynamic" position. The vertical view angle slider has now been removed as it is no longer necessary.

Drop down menus have all been replaced with simple next/previous buttons allowing you to quickly cycle through the different weapons available for each hard point. This is also much more user friendly for Deck users!

The number of different weapons available for each hard point is indicated by the number of dots in each box. The blue dot indicates your current position in the weapon list.

When a weapon is selected it will be loaded (with a little animation!) on to the hardpoint indicated by the red laser line. A short description will also be shown in the weapon box giving you some basic info about what the weapon is and its maximum range.

The killer feature though is the ability to create and save your own load out presets. Simply load the weapons you want in your preset and then click the "Save Loadout" button. You'll be prompted to add a name for you load out like this...



...and then it will be saved for that specific helicopter. You can cycle through your saved presets by using the buttons at the bottom of the screen. Presets are persistant so the next time you load the game you presets will still be there. You can also clone or delete presets by cycling to your preset and clicking "Edit Loadout" you will then get the option to "Save as New" (e.g. clone) or "Delete".

Other updates include your helicopter starting in an "Engine Off" state. This means no more annoying engine noises while you're planning your mission.

Once you start the mission your engines will spool up automatically.

Other improvements include moving all weapon racks into their own asset bundles which should save a huge amount of RAM as they'll only be loaded when needed. I'm hoping this might solve the Hind crashes on the Deck but I haven't had chance to check that just yet...

This updates touches a whole load of code and battling the bugs has been a sizable task!!

The final bug occurred to day which would cause a complete crash when a guided air-ground missile exploded. Guided rockets and Air-Air missiles were uneffected and it seems the bug is actually in Unity's asset bundle system somewhere so I had to work around the issue and, hopefully, it is fixed. But there maybe some other undiscovered issues out there so please let me know if you encounter anything weird like that.

So, assuming no game breaking bugs, this should be the last update for this particular beta. The next beta will be the "Infantry" beta which will focus on getting infantry into the game! ːsteamhappyː

This week, save big on HUMANITY thanks to two sale events live on Steam right now—The Game Awards 2023 Sale and Steam VR Fest!

Grab a copy of HUMANITY for yourself or gift it to a friend for 34% off—under US$20! Truly a great deal for what some call the best puzzle game of 2023. We're nominated for Best VR/AR game in The Game Awards—but you can play on your monitor/Steam Deck as well cuz VR is optional. And, of course, the cute Shiba helps, right?

You have until 10 am Pacific on December 11 to take advantage of this fantastic sale. Don't miss it!

While this release is mostly focused on hotfixing a few issues discovered surrounding merging the old save system with the new one, we have included a few extras that we hope you'll enjoy.

• Expanded Intro to the game
  
• Added Settings to control the Dialog Animation
  
• Added more Market Items to the game
  
• Added more Tooltips
  
• A few button sounds were adjusted
  
• Minor UI adjustments

Bugs:

• Fixed an issue where a save would not hold the galaxy data and result in a crash
  
• Fixed an issue with requesting a mission while in orbit of Bennu
  
• Fixed an issue with time tracking that allowed from some interesting exploiting of the trade system

Future:

• Determining path to make Ultra Wide Monitors balanced
  
• Gameplay styles will be moved from settings to the New Game Setup as they will be part of the save files
  
• Will be reviewing more ways to perform orbital action (Scanning & Patrolling)
  
• Galaxy Map is getting some love

Hello there,

I finally did it! I pressed that button that released this game from the chains of Early Access. It's been long overdue and I hope that this step helps Card Hog to gain more visibility on Steam. If anyone is curious, it wasn't getting more than 1-3 sales per day when it wasn't discounted.

I also hope that new players will have some more feedback and report any issues they can find, I am more than willing to fix any bugs that are discovered and make improvements if needed. Some of the parts of the game (online multiplayer, custom game stuff) got really dusty over time.

There are a couple more things I still want to add to this game, but currently my work plate is pretty full, so I don't want to overpromise ːlunar2019piginablanketː

Cheers!

-
SnoutUp