What's new!!!

• Quests
  
• Shops
  
• New levels

all of these features are currently in the testing phase!! I hope to fix some bugs and make more content like this soon.

Here's Chapter 8 of Lost at Birth.

Now available on Steam.

I hope you like it.

Changelog:

- Chapter 8 added

- Animations: 5 animations added

- Auto save system at end of content added

- Skip credits option added

Misc:
Fixed the bug where animations wouldn't play for some players even when the option is ON. (Changed variable from define to default)

If the animations still don't work for you even after this update, I added a temporary fix:
- Added a file to force the animations to play.

To make it work just drag and drop the file named "anim_force_play" to the /game folder.

First of all it has been a pleasure to talk and make Evomon together with you this year. Your support and feedback have helped us improve and grow. Here’s to more fruitful collaborations in the new year that is coming.

We would like to present to all of you some news about our new game that we are working on, Evomon World





Evomon World is our new game, a sequel to evomon, bringing everything we wanted, you will all have a new chance to explore Evotopia and meet the most diverse evomons in this new experience that is being created.

We ask all of you for your support to make this project a reality , please stay tuned on the oficial discord we plan to release our kickstarter pre-launch project page really soon!

Evomon official Discord :
https://discord.gg/jbEhCQgX

Happy holidays! everyone!

Captains,

We have seen comments that many players are getting ganked around La Mona when farming the event.

You can get rare loot from 4th rates. These ships can be found in Safe Zones around following locations:

• Upper Antilles
  
• South America
  
• Atlantic Coast
  
• East Cuba
  
• Central America
  
• Gulf
  
• Lower Antilles
  
• Yucatan

In addition to that all line ships in Open World (3rd-1st rates) carry rare guns and modules even if they sail to safe zones.

Added more starting card decks

Resolved the issue with artifact not functioning correctly in the Police Station.

Hello! It’s the end of 2023 already. Happy holidays! Hopefully all of you will have a wonderful time with your family and friends.

As we have done before, we’re writing some developer log at the end of the year to reflect on what we’ve done and talk about what’s next. Today is no different, except we don’t really have anything new to share regarding the plan for 2024; it will be mostly finishing the male template redraw and releasing 1.0.


So, how’s the progress for the male template redraw? Despite taking longer than expected, it’s actually quite good! In the latest nightly builds, these templates are ready to be used with the male template:

• All existing pants and shorts.
  
• All existing footwear.
  
• Tank tops and tight t-shirts.
  
• All socks and gloves.

Other more universal templates which are not bound by body template, such as headgear or glasses are naturally also ready to use.

With our current pace, hopefully in January we will have already bypassed current stable builds in terms of available templates for the male template, and in February/March we will have achieved full parity: this means by this point all clothing templates can be used without regard of the currently used body template.

Well, that’s about our plans for next year (at least part of it, we will talk more once 1.0 is finally released). Now let’s look back at what we’ve done this year just in case you’ve missed out on some progress that we’ve made!


In February, we finally finished the female template redraw, plus one flagship feature: Inochi2D Export. Inochi2D is an open-source alternative to Live2D currently in beta. We found this project around August last year, and immediately started working on adding Inochi2D format export to Mannequin.

If you have followed Mannequin for a long time, you may know that exporting to Live2D is something that have been discussed multiple times but always faced some difficulties due to Live2D’s proprietary nature. The existence of Inochi2D provides us with a way to do something similar albeit currently with a far less mature ecosystem. This might be a gamble, but if it works out, then all of us will get something special soon.

For now, here are examples of what you can do with Mannequin’s Inochi2D export:

• Use the exported model as a VTuber avatar for livestreaming via Inochi2D’s official livestreaming app, Inochi Session.
  
• Open the exported model in Inochi2D’s official editing/rigging app, Inochi Creator, to tweak your character poses with head and/or body rotation or slight leaning. After that, you can then export your character again to PNG, and use the result in your game development project.
  
• If you have learned a bit more about Inochi Creator, you can also make looping animations with Mannequin’s exported model. After exported to video file, you can use those animations in Ren’Py via its Movie Sprites feature.

In the near future, (fingers crossed because most of this are out of our hands) you might also be able to do these:

• Use your exported Inochi2D models directly in Ren’Py to fully implement animated, programmable character portraits (like Nekopara series, for example).
  
• Other than Ren’Py, the Inochi2D lead developer also have expressed interest to implement runtimes for Godot and Unity, the latter of which is often used in gacha games like Azur Lane or NIKKE. These game engine integrations (Ren’Py, Godot, and Unity) are officially planned by the Inochi2D lead developer, as stated on their official Twitter account.
  
• A group of Rust developers are working on Rust re-implementation of Inochi2D. It’s still missing some features but there are demonstrations of Inochi2D models running in WebGL already made. This means that once this re-implementation is done, you will be able to use your exported Inochi2D models in websites. Usage in HTML5-based game engines, such as Visual Novel Maker, TyranoBuilder and RPG Maker MV/MZ will likely also be possible.

For now, our target is making sure all the templates provided by Mannequin are ready for Inochi2D by the time Inochi2D 0.9 releases, which is the planned start point of their official game engine integration.


Alongside new features like Inochi2D export mentioned above, this year we have also made a lot of improvements under the hood. Rendering performance has been improved by up to 100%, which in turn reduces the time needed to edit and export your character by half, especially in batch export mode.

Memory management is also improved, with reduction in overall RAM usage plus fixes for memory leaks which will make Mannequin more stable when used in a long time.

In terms of character customization, more options have been added (albeit very minor), such as head and ear height. Some UI changes have also been made, like resized color picker and sample character rerolling. New template options which are not bound to body templates, such as hairstyles and face parts, have also been added from time to time.


Shortly after the addition of Inochi2D export feature, we made a short video tutorial explaining how to utilize it for VTuber livestreaming:



Admittedly, the quality of the video isn’t that good, but it’s a tangible output and we are satisfied considering its ‘first try’ status. As both Mannequin and Inochi2D matures more, we will make more video tutorials in 2024. These videos will not be limited to VTuber usage, but also covers various game development scenarios (especially with Ren’Py).


A few months ago, we made Puppetstring, a webcam face tracking tool designed to be used with Inochi Session. Our objective for this action is two things:

• Providing more value for Mannequin users, due to the extreme lack of more beginner-friendly app for webcam tracking in Inochi2D ecosystem.
  
• Diverting requests/complaints in regards of Inochi2D compatibility with VTube Studio. If you have joined Inochi2D’s Discord server for quite some time (like us), you’ll notice that there have been a lot of potential users walking away from Inochi2D due to Inochi Session’s lack of features and/or usage complexities. This is understandable especially when VTube Studio is the one being used as comparison. By making tools like Puppetstring, we hope that the limited resources of Inochi2D development can go more towards game engine integrations instead, which is something we are less equipped to contribute to.

We will continue to monitor the situation regarding other projects which are highly valuable to Mannequin’s users. If time permits, after 1.0 release we will also look around and evaluate what we can do outside Mannequin itself to bring even more value to all of you, both in game development or general content creation scenarios.


Usually nobody likes to talk about money, pricing, and such. However, most of Mannequin’s users are either game developers or content creators, and these are things that we all calculate at multiple points in our day-to-day work. Therefore, we think that discussing the value proposition of Mannequin is something that is nice to do from time to time.

As planned from the start, Mannequin does not release any paid DLCs but will increase in price periodically as more content and features are added. Alongside other factors (such as the dreaded inflation) as part of the consideration, this year we finally raised our base price to 20 USD.

However, Mannequin does not exist in a vacuum, and being part of the free market, we must always look at various alternatives available in other places. At this point, the closest competitor that we are considering as references are customizable Live2D models available in places such as Nizima, Etsy, or Ko-fi.

Other things such as VRoid are also constantly monitored, albeit not as much because we felt that the underlying approach of 3D versus 2D is very different. In both game development and VTubing sphere, both are equally valid and there will always be people who prefer the 2D look over 3D despite 3D’s superior flexibility. Mannequin is strictly aimed at the 2D-preferring crowd, with every bit of its strength and weakness accepted.

So, how’s Mannequin value proposition compared to the places mentioned above?

• Based on our quick look at Etsy (using ‘vtuber’ and ‘vtuber customizable’ as search keyword, sorted by top customer reviews), Mannequin is still very competitive in terms of both actual pricing (most are hovering around 25 USD and up) and content (most, if not all of them have less clothing/hairstyle/face parts options, and limited to one gender).
  
• Looking around at Nizima (using #カスタム and #カスタマイズ as search keyword), Mannequin is even more competitive in terms of actual pricing, with lots of customizable models goes past 10000 JPY (~70 USD). Just like Etsy, most, if not all of them are restricted to one gender. However, as expected, the average quality of models available for sale on Nizima is very high.

Despite the extremely competitive price point compared to the amount of content Mannequin provides, we must remember that we are tied to the less mature ecosystem of Inochi2D. There are limited third-party apps/runtimes available still, so we consider the base price point of 20 USD is fair for now. Of course, if you have already supported our project then you don’t have to worry about all these anymore, as we are still committed to our no paid DLC plan.

So, that’s all from us! Again, happy holidays and happy new year to you, and hopefully we’ll able to share our development log again in a few weeks once we have made more progress in the male template redraw.

See you soon!

Hello everyone. I’ve got one last update for you before the end of the year. The ”Gearbits holiday special” update adds one new mission and a new map for the wave battle mode. It’s just one mission, but it has a special gimmick. The mission has four different endings. Each ending favours a different playstyle, so you can play through the mission multiple times to discover all the endings. You can access the new mission form the “extra missions” menu. You’ll find the mission there, if you’ve progressed far enough in the story.

I’ve also added some small changes and fixes. The resolution settings now have options for 4k resolutions. At least in theory. I don’t have a 4k monitor, so I don’t know if they work. Another thing I noticed, is if you use the Steam input mapping, the pause menu doesn't work on a controller. So consider disabling Steam input, unless you really need to use it.

The next update is going fine. I put it on the side, to focus on getting this update done first, but now I’m ready to continue working on it. But first, I want to take some days off for Christmas. I hope that you all have the chance to do the same.

-New vehicle: Pz.Bef.Wg.IV J! A special command version of panzer IV that can command your teammates!
-Next week's new vehicles: Archer, M3 Grant!
-Fixed the bug that prevented the BM-8-24 from firing after increasing its magazine size.
-Reduced the firing spread of the BM-8-24 by 25%.

尊敬的各位道友们：
先在这里提前祝大家在即将到来的新的一年里事事顺心、平安健康！
《蜀山：初章》PC版发售至今，已一年有余；而继买断版今年6月1日的第三个资料片“南方魔教”以及网络版7月27日的第三个资料片“万象更新”后，我们时隔半年再度给大家带来了《蜀山：初章》的全新版本系列“青云直上”！


“青云直上”系列介绍
从“万象更新”资料片后，我们一直在沉下心来总结蜀山PC版（买断和网络版）遇到的各种问题，并且尝试从游戏底层玩法框架设计上，来解决这些问题。经过这小半年的努力，我们筹备了大量的新内容，并计划陆续以资料片的形式进行更新推出（具体时间因为人手规模限制可能会有所变动，敬请谅解）。

【所有计划节点粗排】：

“青云直上”系列更新包含2024年诸多节日福利计划（买断&网络双版本：元旦、春节、元宵等等）、一次“万象更新升级”、1-3月的诸多资料片更新、《蜀山：初章网络版》虚幻五重制版、以及单机游戏和买断版用户期待纯单机续作《青城》：

【2024年蜀山年度节日福利计划】：传统佳节，感恩回馈
★在每一个传统佳节，福利红包大派送
★没有付费，只为感谢

【蜀山：初章网络版计划】： 2023年12月至2024年3月
a)“万象更新”升级：老服升级，新老互通
★网络版老服1-8服升级到万象更新资料片版本，拥有全新的数值体系
★为后续资料片作前期准备

b)“资料片：元江夺宝上篇”：炼精捕怪、夺宝前置
★玩家可在大世界自由抓取灵兽，认主成为自己的宠物
★灵兽自由BD，丰富战斗策略
★为后续资料片“元江夺宝下篇”做好铺垫

c)“资料片：大争之世”：跨服互动，携手修仙
★不同区服玩家可以携手下副本、打BOSS，甚至参加PVP战场，再也不怕孤单
★更加开放自由的社交体系、同时伴随跨服将会大幅度更新核心词条玩法

d)“资料片：北海陷空岛”： 飞天大陆，奇幻之旅
★开放天空探索，新增北海陷空岛地图，开启奇幻修仙之旅
★新增境界上限，及相应装备、功法等养成内容
★新增专属陷空岛PVP玩法
★新增专属陷空岛PVE玩法

e)“蜀山：初章虚幻五重制版”：坚持内容及游戏本身、绝不停歇
★我们在推出新资料片玩法同时，也在不断提升团队技术能力，尝试新的技术模式，力争为广大玩家带来更好的游戏体验。经过这半年的尝试和努力，我们结合最新UE5（虚幻5）引擎，对游戏的画面、性能等进行了大幅提升。待时机成熟时，我们将会隆重推出蜀山的UE5重制版，除了更好的画面、性能外，重制版中也会包含我们对游戏玩法、数值创新尝试。
★具体时间请关注官方公告，敬请大家期待！（资料片全部更新完后）


【蜀山：初章买断版计划】： 2023年12月至2024年3月
a)“资料片：元江夺宝上篇”：炼精捕怪、夺宝前置
★玩家可在大世界自由抓取灵兽，认主成为自己的宠物
★灵兽自由BD，丰富战斗策略
★为后续资料片“元江夺宝下篇”做好铺垫

b)“资料片：北海陷空岛”： 飞天大陆，奇幻之旅
★开放天空探索，新增北海陷空岛地图，开启奇幻修仙之旅
★新增境界上限，及相应装备、功法等养成内容
★新增专属陷空岛PVP玩法
★新增专属陷空岛PVE玩法

c)蜀山续作“青城”：单机、沙盒、修仙
★重楼在去年有过承诺，蜀山买断版的单机可联网模式给纯单机用户们带来的不开心、不愉快我们会用一款纯单机来弥补，同时会开放MOD编辑器
★预计在2024年夏秋开放邀请测试体验

网络版“万象更新升级”预告
我们在7月27日推出资料片“万象更新”时，保留了老服未进行升级，主要是为了给老服玩家一个过渡阶段，让老服玩家可以自由选择是否进入新服体验。
后续经过问卷调查(“万象更新”老服玩家升级新数值调查公告)，我们得知大部分老服玩家，也愿意尽快升级到和新服一致的“万象更新”版本。
因此，在“青云直上”系列资料片来临之际，我们决定正式启动老服“万象更新升级”，将老服更新到和新服一致的版本，为“青云直上”后续系列资料片更新作准备。
【升级时间】
2023年12月29日10:00-18:00，届时游戏服务器将停机更新维护，时长为8小时。如遇特殊情况，开机将顺延。给大家带来的不便，敬请谅解。
【更新补偿】
更新结束后，我们为大家准备了丰富的补偿，具体如下
1、全服达到练气期的玩家将获得价值388元青云直上系列更新礼包一份。
2、回归玩家（最后登录在12月22日0点前的玩家）将额外获得回归礼包一份。
3、12月29日~30日每晚20:00~22:00在线玩家每日将获得活跃礼包一份。
【注意事项】
1、请所有玩家在数据升级前领取邮件，并下架交易行、摆摊物品以免丢失。
2、官方将于12月25日下午16点关闭交易行，避免有玩家忘记下架道具，导致升级时出现不必要损失。
3、升级后新老数值服将合并为一个服务器，届时升级期间新老服将会一起停服。
【升级规则】
升级后老服玩家各项养成数值将按如下方式转换成新数值

【其他更新】
本次升级停服期间，还会一同解决如下问题：
1、修复部分七品材料掉落的问题
2、提高强化突破材料掉率
3、降低化神小怪的难度
4、部分不能销毁物品变为可销毁
=========================================
有玩家在问，重楼为什么这么久没有声音？
那是因为，我们花了半年时间冷静思考，打磨产品；认真反思蜀山至今遇见的所有问题以及玩家们给我们提供的意见： 对我们来说，我们的核心是应该将更多的时间精力投入到游戏玩法本身！
有玩家好奇，蜀山凉了，为什么还要更新？
的确，截至到目前为止，买断版只有800左右的日常活跃玩家、网络版仅剩400左右的日常在线用户；的确不复最初声势，也无利益可谋！但是，正因为如此；我们不是更应该给这些还留在我们游戏支持着我们的道友做出更多更棒的内容么；重楼的确做的不好，但一定有始有终！
=========================================
【联系我们】
联系官方解决BUG：请进入蜀山社区，在游戏内点击“联系官方”按钮，输入手机号进行绑定，然后下载fanbook应用即可加入官方fanbook社群在里面直接联系我们
与道友交流修仙心得：进入官方Q群733747412


重楼工作室

2023年12月24日

Hey everyone, just wanted to give you all an update if you've been wondering what we at Symmetry Break Studio have been up to.

Many of you may not have seen anything new about Misgiven ever since we showed the game at gamescom 2023. We want to let you know we're still hard at work, albeit a bit slower, as we hunt for a publisher and further funding for the game. Even though this introduces some delays in our development schedule, we're gearing up to come back in full force in 2024.

2023 was a very exciting year for Misgiven, all caused by your interest and support, whether you spoke or wrote about the game, hosted it at events, came up to us to talk about it, playtested it, offered feedback or wishlisted it. All these things were incredibly helpful and tremendously encouraging!

If you're keen on revisiting the excitement of gamescom in August 2023, here's a couple ways to do it:

• Read the thoughts of BBC journalist Laura Cress about Misgiven, listed among many other amazing adventure games she played at gamescom.
  
• Watch the playthrough of Misgiven's demo on the Indie Arena Booth livestream
  
• Those of you who speak German can listen to the Behind the Screens – Mental Health-Spiele auf der Gamescom – Podcast E076, hosted by psychologists Dr. Benjamin Strobel, Nicolas Hoberg and Jessica Kathmann, in which they look at video games from the perspective of psychology.

November saw Misgiven in the spotlight at the PLAY! Festival in Hamburg. If you missed it, you can catch a glimpse of the event through this Twitch livestream snippet, where our producer, Anca, talks about the game and answers a few questions.

In December, Misgiven was one of the 3 nominees for the Ubisoft Newcomer Award at the German Developer Award in Cologne. While we didn't win, we are so proud of having made it this far!

For the time being, we will be sporadic with posts here bar major updates, but in the meantime there is an active Discord community that we regularly engage with. You are more than welcome to join us on Discord to discuss the game and talk to the team in a more personal setting.

Thank you so much for your support in 2023 and stay tuned for what's coming.
We wish you wonderful winter holidays and a fabulous new year!