Look alive, Renegades! The following changes are available in HAWKED on Windows PC as of the latest update on Thursday, January 18, 2024. Update your game to the latest version on MY.GAMES Launcher or Steam to play HAWKED for free in Early Access.
IMPROVEMENTS & ADJUSTMENTS
JUMP FOR JOY
Jumps are now twice as high.
Jumps are executed immediately without your Renegade squatting down first.
Jumps executed while sliding now have a 10% shorter duration (overall jump and movement speed remain the same).
Low-height parkour moves have been removed.
MATCHMAKING
The early match experience has been improved in matches with low player counts.
BUGFIXES
COMBAT & TRAVERSAL
Improved hit registration on Renegades moving on their Hoverboard.
Fixed an issue where Renegades would start climbing a ledge while trying to jump off it.
Changed the camera behavior while using the Hoverboard (this only impacts players who have the camera movement option enabled).
Fixed an issue that caused Renegades to get stuck in a falling animation if they used a melee attack while falling.
GENERAL
Fixed a bug where statistics on the info screen had incorrect descriptions.
HAWKED is now available in Early Access. That means that development is ongoing and relies on your feedback to help improve and polish the overall game experience before the full launch in 2024. As such, you may encounter gameplay and technical issues while playing.
We are closely monitoring gameplay sessions and your feedback, and HAWKED will undergo regular maintenance to deploy patches and hotfixes to resolve any issues. Please keep an eye on Discord and future patch notes for more updates.
If you need troubleshooting for common technical problems or account-related queries, or if you can’t find a solution to your issue, please visit our Support page.
Hi! I am actually really confused about how time works - how is it only 1 week since the end of the Kickstarter?! Anyone else feel the same?
So while I investigate the mysterious construct known as "Time", let's dive into what we've been doing, what's next, and start to take some steps towards sorting out some rewards for you lovely Goblins!
WHAT WE'VE BEEN WORKING ON
To kick things off, we thought it'd be neat to look at some character concepts and talk about our process a little bit.
First up, a couple of images that show the first stages of how we concept a Species for the game! The team agrees the Species (in this case, Frogs), and then discusses and pinpoints references for that, covering literal examples of other frog-characters, or even just key words we think are important to consider. So with these Frog People we called out Chrono Trigger specifically as having a very cool Frog, but then we also include notes about things that might be important to their culture (like lilypads) or physical attributes and differences (toads = bumpy). Once that's done, we smash out what you can see here, a bunch of relatively simple line art concepts that touch on some of the more interesting elements we called out, and sometimes we just riff on whatever seems fun (stilts!), while also playing with stature, body shape, and the like.
Frog people are just the best people.
The importance of this step of the process isn't really about landing on something special, or even wringing every last creative drop out of the opportunity - it's about getting familiar with the demands and specifics of a New Thing, and playing with it. It's cheap, fast, and fun - and sometimes you strike gold.
With the Mushroom Folk, the initial phase covered only 3 sketches, but each one pushed their idea quite far and in separate directions, and we got what we needed out of it. This stuff is like a first draft, which is by its nature always perfect - because the only thing required of it is to exist!
Sometimes you realise that the practicalities of getting dressed in the morning are just as important as anything else.
Related to characters, we have also been working on the "Paperdolls" system a bunch recently. The term "Paperdolls" is something we've used before and we're thinking it might be a good topic for a deep-dive sometime, but essentially all the non-quest-giving characters are generated from a set of visual parts, and we've been trying to make sure we add as much variety as the game needs. Here are just two examples of this system "in action" - for reference we will need the Paperdolls to give us hundreds if not thousands of customers to support the game, spread across all Species.
Left: a completely randomly generated human customer. Right: Same, but one that happens to feature the features of yours truly!
But it's not just the Art department that've been keeping busy - oh no! Design has too - and we keep banging on about planning the Early Access launch, so I thought what better way of showing the sheer gargantuan size of a task like this, than literally showing you?!
Welcome to the Trash Goblin "Game Design Document"! This is literally the whole game laid out on paper - even down to dropped features, and of course some dreams and plans for the future!
We use a piece of software called Miro to plan and work together online - we're a remote-first studio - and it is essentially a digital whiteboard with infinite "Post-It notes" and all kinds of cool features. It allows us to colour code and arrange thigs for clear communication, and to collaborate in all kinds of useful ways.
This is a zoomed-in look at one of the sub-sections, which is where we're planning the Early Access launch!
Once we've had a proper Design-led pass over all the elements we want to make for the Early Access launch of the game, we'll take Code and Art through it to spot holes in the plan and bring up additional elements we'd not considered, and once that's done we'll be ready to guesstimate all the effort required, and break it down until we know what we can fit in the time we have, and what will have to be moved to an update during Early Access itself. We can never plan perfectly, but using this method we can be confident of our reasoning and happy that we're covering everything we need to.
WHAT NEXT
We're still settling down post-Kickstarter and wrapping up some work unrelated to Trash Goblin that needs doing, while beginning to identify all the pieces of the puzzle that we'll need to tackle for a smooth development! Everyone on the team is focused on us creating a sensible plan for Trash Goblin that results in you all having the most fun possible with the Early Access launch of the game, and beyond to 1.0 - for what it's worth we want to make sure everything in that version is super polished and feels as finished as we can (kinda like the demo, but even more so!) and as detailed above if that means we have to shift a feature into an Early Access update we will. But don't worry yet, right now we're doing our darndest to cram as much in as we can.
YOUR QUESTIONS
We love chatting with you in our public discord, and when I asked what you'd like to see in these updates, there were a few elements that I was really happy were brought up! I think it is safe to say most of the requests were around concept art and progress shots of stuff we're working on, and that's going to be a consistent element of these updates (see above).
But one topic was Accessibility, and it's an important one.
The demo raised a few points where people were asking about our plans, especially around the colour-coded words in customer conversations, to the need to hold the mouse button down to clean with the sponge etc.
Specifically to these two elements - the word colour was partially an arbitrary decision, and we're due to overhaul the customer conversations with a ton more polish and features anyway, so we'll have a chance to address this element then. The mouse button holding was a really good spot, and we're looking to one of our key inspirations - Powerwash Sim - for clues here. They let you 'lock' their hose to 'on' and that's something that might work well for us! We don't want to lose the tactile moment for people who want it (it feels 'right' holding buttons to press or hold objects in the game) but of course we can and should allow for both!
On a broader note about accessibility, we definitely didn't fully consider the implications of these elements (and others) when building the demo, but were absolutely aware of the need to rework and establish some rules and options for players of all kinds when we get to release. It's a bit early for us to properly announce what these are (see above re: planning!) but certainly, our intent is to build this stuff into the game sensibly and that means most of the time doing so as early as possible, and to direct our efforts so that anyone out there is able to play as comfortably as we can possibly accommodate. We're not a Sony AAA studio so there will be a limit to what we can do, and it's probably wise to expect a rollout of these sorts of features over time, but we make games for people to enjoy so why would we get in the way of that?!
In the meantime, please do tell us what you want to know more about in these updates, we're still relatively new to this!
I just finished the last update for a little while. It contains a few often requested quality of life improvements.
1. The menus are redesigned. Now you can access the menu from inside of a level and from the world map.
2. World map access from the main menu. If you are in a puzzle, you can go to the main menu to access the world map. (Note: you can also access the world map at any time by pressing 'M' on the keyboard or 'X' on most game controllers).
3. Volume controls follow a logarithmic pattern for additional precision.
4. A bunch of tiny improvements to the way the menus and world map feel when you use them.
I have a major surgery next week (don't worry, I will be totally fine), and it will require a short hospitalization. If you have any questions at all during this time, please head over to the game's Discord, and my friends will help you out.
Thanks so much for playing and for your overwhelmingly positive support. I feel so lucky to have given you this game.
Ede here, straight from the forge of Soulslinger: Envoy of Death, bringing you some good news: As announced in last weeks update posting, it's about time for the very first Early Access Roadmap update and for you to get your hands on the improved and enhanced "Gunplay 2.0"!
Update 0.422 adds overhauled recoil animations including recoil in ADS, "flying numbers" that appear when dealing damage to enemies, more noticeable impact visual effects and audio cues, improved enemy AI, balance changes, and many more:
Added "flying numbers" to be able to track damage dealt
Improved weapon movement and physics
Improved revolver recoil animations
Improved movement and jumping physics of Soulslinger
There is proper recoil during ADS now
Added impact VFX and audio when enemies get hit
Fire and electric dashes have been replaced with brand new, more useful shockwave abilities
Improved enemy reaction animations to getting hit
Improved enemy AI, enemies no longer get stuck on level geometry
The dash screen VFX has been replaced with a more prominent animated effect
Gamepad buttons will now be displayed instead of keyboard prompts if a gamepad is used
Balance:
ADS has a much smaller movement speed penalty
Reduced player dash distance a bit
Vastly reduced the health of Cartel Brutes
His own explosive bullets no longer hurt Soulslinger
Electric bullets are stronger, also affect explosive barrels and bonus crates now
Increased melee damage
Gloaming Strike provides a greater bonus to melee damage
Bugfixes:
Fixed numerous gamepad-related bugs
Polished existing maps for smoother navigation
Fixed a bug where the Cursed King would not be visible while leaving during his first introduction
Fixed a bug in the cave arena where enemies would get stuck next to the stairs
Fixed a bug where the pirate's double damage bullet would not appear in the inventory
Fixed a bug where in the temple yard arena, enemies could spawn or teleport above the ceiling
Fixed a bug in the "hanged skeleton" arena where Spectral Shardstones could spawn outside the playable area
Fixed a bug where part of the animated sky was not visible
Fixed a rare bug where some enemies would just automatically get killed
Fixed a bug where enemies would hop up stairs instead of walking
Eliminated several cases of enemies unnecessarily jumping
Fixed backslashes before each apostrophe in the French language
You can now close the difficulty selection window in Haven without making a choice
Fixed a camera bug in Dead Eye McGee's introduction cut-scene
Please let me know what you think about the update and its contents! if you have any feedback, please post it in the comments, in the Steam Community or on our Discord server.
So long, friends. Have fun with "Gunplay 2.0"! Ede out!
Any information and images are Work In Progress (WIP) and may change drastically before releasing
Since the Ascension Update, we've had plenty of feedback on how the game currently feels for players. We wanted to share our thoughts on how we're planning to adjust the game to make sure progression and other areas are the best they can be for all types of players.
We'd love to hear your feedback on these proposed changes and get the ball rolling! We'll be looking to make the following changes, with additions, straight after the upcoming Shop rework!
Progression
Leveling rates are currently too slow
We originally made the levelling rate slightly slower so that we could increase the pace if need be, so we'll be doing exactly that; less required XP per level across the board
Equipment Tier unlocks are too linear and too slow
Alongside the progression rate changes above, we're going to change Tier unlocks so that multiple are unlocked at once instead of only one. This means you'll have more choice on which Equipment you want to upgrade first, and which you want to save for later
We'll also be increasing the cost of some upgrades as at the moment players can unlock almost everything straight away, when some upgrades should be something you save up for
Prestiges Prestiges are a completely optional part of Progression, however, we understand that there aren't many incentives right now to encourage players to prestige:
With new player models we will be adding unique Prestige-related unlocks for players to purchase with in-game $, such as accessories for your player model or a cool new jacket!
Coming soon for each prestige, players will be able to choose one of the following:
A sum of extra starting money to kickstart their equipment loadouts or to save for their first few upgrades
Or a small XP boost for that prestige only, allowing players to level up slightly faster, but have to manage their money better.
Equipment
Evidence Equipment
DOTS
T1 is slightly too hard to use, so we'll be making it brighter and increasing the range of the light it emits
EMF Reader
T1's needle often gets too close or even goes past the [5] mark during events and hunts, so we'll be clamping that pesky needle a little harder to make sure people aren't mistaking it for evidence
T3 will receive a new sound for an EMF5 reading, making it easier for evidence without having to pick it up
Additionally, we'll be changing where the T3's sensor reads from for PC players. This will make the directional indicator more accurate and feel more intuitive to read
Thermometer
T1 never had its randomness to the readings, making it much more accurate than the other tiers. We'll be implementing a slight fluctuation on readings to reduce it's effectiveness
T2 and T3 will be adjusted so that after the initial "hold to scan", continuing to hold the use button will keep refreshing the temperature reading every second or so
T3 will have its randomness reduced further to make it even better than T2
Ultraviolet
We'll be flipping T1 and T2 around so that players start with the flashlight and unlock the glowstick second. This should feel more like a useful progression than it currently is
Optional Equipment
Firelights & Igniters
We'll be increasing the duration and light range for all tiers, giving players new ways to walk around in dark areas
Head Gear
We'll be adding an additional keybinding for toggling on and off your Head Gear slot, as many players have expressed that the current method isn't ideal
All three tiers of Head Gear will have a new sound play when being interfered with by the ghost to let players know they should turn it off during hunts!
T3's night vision doesn't currently have any paranormal interference, so we'll be adding some of that to reduce its effectiveness during hunts and keep it on par with other equipment
Motion Sensor
T3's truck map indicator will be changed to be more accurate and show what it's detecting clearer
Parabolic Microphone
To aid hearing-impaired users, we'll be making the red LED light on the side of the T1 Paramic "flash" when it picks up sounds
Photo camera
T2 will receive a slight buff to photo-taking speed
We'll be fixing (for the final time) the oversight of taking the ghost photo with a full book. Pesky haunted cameras!
There are still some bugs with photos, but with the major photo overhaul coming soon, a lot of that will be fixed as a byproduct. However, we're still looking at increasing the consistency of photo-taking!
More benefits of upgrading the camera Tiers will come with the new system, including the removal of failed photos!
Sanity Medication
We'll be speeding up the Sanity restoration effect for T2 to make the upgrade more worthwhile
Sound Sensor
We'd like to add a mute button to each sensor in the Truck, so you can concentrate on watching DOTS on the monitor in safety and silence
Cursed Posessions
Monkey Paw
With the most recent change to the Paw affecting the "see ghost" wish, we're going to make the darkness effect start when the hunt starts, so you can actually see the ghost during the event!
Training
Some parts of Training aren't accurate to gameplay or are frustrating, so we'll be making the following adjustments:
We'll replace the DOTS section with something more accurate to how ghosts act in-game
Lower the overall temperature in the warehouse to make the Freezing Temps section less frustrating, as well as add cold breath to relevant areas.
The EMF section should require EMF5 to progress instead of any EMF.
The Ghost Orbs section sometimes completes without the player knowing why, so we'll be increasing the time that you need to aim the camera at the orb before the door unlocks.
If you experience any issues or want to give feedback, please join the official Phasmophobia Discord: https://discord.gg/phasmophobia
Please be aware that we will be conducting scheduled maintenance on Steam Knight Online Servers and service will be temporarily unavailable.
Please be aware that we will be conducting scheduled maintenance on Steam Knight Online Servers and service will be temporarily unavailable.
Maintenance time will be as follows: Knight Online Server Time (EST): 21:00 South America (PET): 20:00 Turkey: 4:00
Duration: Approx. 4 hours
During this server maintenance;
* Knight Marble event has started. (4 Weeks)
* Full Moon Rift event has started. (4 Weeks)
* DX 11 and visual updates have been added to the game.
* EXP and NP Event (4 Weeks) 50% EXP, +10 NP and +10 Ladder between 20.00 - 00.00 (8 PM - 00 AM) server time
* Pathos Glove and triple SC buff event has started on NPC Aset!
2 - 30 Days Pathos Glove - 60.000.000 Noah 2200 HP + Armor 380 Scroll Package- 60.000.000 Noah 2200 HP + Armor 380 + Attack Scroll Package- 75.000.000 Noah
* Red chicken event has started. (4 Weeks)
* Special "I Love Knight Online emblem" event. - Players who post more than 20 "I Love Knight Online" posts between January 18, 2024 and February 15, 2024 will be rewarded with the "Redistribution item" on February 15, 2024. (The sent item will be deleted from the letter on March 14, 2024.)
* Players with 83 Rebirth 6 and above will be rewarded with the "Fortified Sterling Silver Gemston" item when they win the Juraid Mountain event.
* You will have the chance to drop 4 new accessories with the "Fortified Sterling Silver Gemston" item. Except for these items, its content is the same as the Silvery gem. - Fortified Minotaur Earrings - Fortified Lich King's Earrings - Fortified Cockatrice Earrings - Fortified Lillime's Earrings
* Warboard system has been added to "Knight Royale, Ultima's Dungeon, Manes' Arena and Chaos Lord" events.
* 50 kill, 7th Armor and 8th armor quests can now be taken with characters level 81 and above.
* Lunar War Updates; - When the Lunar War ends, a Win/Lose end-of-war UI window has been added to the game. - When the Lunar War ends, players over 80 will be teleported to the CZ region. Players under 80 will be teleported to their own race's castle. - When the King is killed during the Lunar War, a message will be sent as an announcement. - When the Giant Minotaur is killed, your character will receive a Ribbon.
- The name of the Infiltrate the Enemy Country mission has been changed to "Collect the enemy Emblem". - To complete the Collect Enemy Emblem mission, you need to collect Symbols from the Lunar Lich creatures in front of the Lunar Gate.
* A correction has been made for items with different icons on the Menicias list.
* The icon of the Master's Teaching item has been changed.
* All missions on the Ardream map have been removed from the game.
* Daily Login event has ended.
* Manes Survivor event has ended.
* Aset Minerva, Special Defense and Priest Prayer sales event has ended.
* New Year events have ended.
* Returnee and Return Supply Exchange voucher items have been deleted from the game.
In anticipation of the early access release, a huge new update for the demo has been released!
Version 0.0.4: + Added a campaign system + Added a campaign for The Necromancer (The Siren campaign coming soon!) + Moved existing game mode to new "Free Play" mode + Completely redesigned UI + Added a shop deck system, enabling player to select which items appear in the shop in game + Added rewards for winning/losing levels, to be used in shop deck system + Added 10 new towers which will be unlocked as you progress through the campaign: + Wizard + Witch + Assassin + Knight + Crossbowman + Landmine + Bear Trap + Teleporter + The Necromancer + The Siren + Added the option to change the game speed + Removed the Wisp + Removed spells (to be added back in the future) + Removed tower upgrades (to be added back in the future) + Remove the concept of Tower "Tags" (these abilities now affect all towers) + Many balancing changes + Many bug fixes
This dev log was originally posted on Patreon and SubscribeStar on January 12, 2024.
We hope everyone had a happy and healthy holiday season! We took some days off to celebrate Christmas with friends and family, and have returned refreshed and ready to work.
If you haven't already, be sure to check out our annual year in review post: ViM Studios: 2023 Year in Review! That post also talks about our goals and priorities for 2024, most of which have to do with developing A Shot in the Dark.
Since our last official dev log (A Shot in the Dark: Dev Log 18-Dec-2023), the last remaining scene that was left to be written was finished. All that's left to write is the chapter wrap up and Photogram content. The final word count for all the scripts written was between 60K-70K words, and we're estimating about 55K words of pure dialogue. We'll have the exact figure when we prepare the chapter for translation.
Josselyn has been plugging away at renders for Chapter 4. Before Christmas she was able to finish the remaining renders for the Delia lewd scene, and after Christmas she finished the non-lewd renders for the Delia scene. This week she posed all the renders for the Monica scene, about half of which are rendered.
The Delia and Monica scenes were the only remaining lewd scenes from Chapter 4 that needed renders. That means all the "big scenes" are done! Non-lewd scenes typically have far fewer renders, so the ~4 scenes remaining to make renders for will likely not add substantially to the render count (which is currently 1,936). The final render count will probably be around ~2,200 but of course we won't know the actual number until we're done.
TheOmega has been working on coding and animations for Chapter 4, as well as a bug fix for a texting issue that some Steam users were reporting. We got the fix out to Steam players last week. If you were encountering the texting bug with a version purchased on another platform, please let us know so we can get you an updated build.
As mentioned in our end of year wrap up, m. from Tsundere Studio has been working on revamp of the GUI for A Shot in the Dark. They finished up last week! This process went much faster than we anticipated, so although we hadn't originally planned to update the GUI with the Chapter 4 update, we'll now be able to.
Thank you to m. for all of their hard work! Be sure to wishlist their game on Steam: