Feb 16, 2024

FORENSIC FRIDAY 68: THE RETURN OF FASHIONCORP

Containcorp - plasmarcstudios

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Welcome to Forensic Friday 68! We've shifted to a fortnightly schedule, and boy, has it been a busy couple of weeks. We've been tying up loose ends with category C intake, introducing new art assets, and sorting out staff hiring. Fashioncorp is back in action with a focus on managing clothes for NPCs. Category C onboarding is now a thing, complete with a complex workflow involving processing, erasure, and alignment. We've also got new art assets like medical equipment and communication consoles, all in our signature retro-future style. Gangs now have a proper place in the game, and we're revamping the traits system to add more depth. Plus, we're working on implementing a staff hierarchy and sprucing up our Patreon rewards. It's been a whirlwind, but progress is definitely being made. Stay tuned for more updates!

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Feb 16, 2024

FORENSIC FRIDAY 67: NPCS MEMORIES & TRAFFIC

Containcorp - plasmarcstudios

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author

Hey everyone,
This week's been quite a ride! We've been diving deep into NPC behaviour, making some significant strides in how they interact with their environment. First off, we've implemented a traffic system where vehicles actually follow the rules of the road. It was a Herculean effort involving machine learning and some creative task delegation, but we got there.

On the NPC front, they now have the ability to head home when they're tired. It's a small detail but adds a touch of realism to their routines. The real meat of our NPC development, though, is the introduction of memory mechanics. This ties into our Category C Onboarding system and the mental system, allowing NPCs to create and recall memories based on their experiences. It's a fascinating mechanic that could lead to some truly emergent storytelling.

In addition to all this, I've been working on refining our anomaly classification system, making sure our case files are up to date with the latest changes.

Overall, progress is steady, if not a bit slower than anticipated. Development always throws curveballs, but we're adapting and pushing forward. Until next time!

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Feb 16, 2024

Defense in Depth - 16th of February - Developer's Diary S5

Boat Crew - Cotanius Jeta

Hello Captain,

We're here with another show, don't tell, kind of Developer's Diary. The implementation of base defenses is almost complete, so let's take a look together!

First off, we have the shore obstacles that are little more than a pile of rocks held together by barbed wire and stakes. Such improvised fortifications were cheap and effective, and as such are a common sight on fortified beaches in Boat Crew. They generally don't stray too far out into the sea and should not affect your mobility appreciably, but they contribute to completing the look of a fortified base.

In the next layer up, we have the shore fortifications, generally wooden bunkers or sandbag gun positions overviewing obstacles made of wooden stakes or barbed wire. Wooden bunkers are a step up from mere sandbag positions in terms of survivability, and higher ranked bases where the enemy had more time and opportunity to dig in will feature them in greater proportion.

Wooden bunkers will not merely disappear after being shot, but will instead remain as defunct husks that act as shot blockers, giving some directionality to engaging a gun position with direct fire. Explosives, such as the mortar or rockets, will be your friends here, being more or less unaffected by this mechanic, though wooden bunkers will still be vulnerable to direct fire for the most part.

Inland mortar pits are being added, coming in a variety of either triple mortar pits or heavy mortar pits. They will attack you at high angles much like your own mortar does, and will generally outrange you, but neither variety should be too difficult to dodge unless you stand still. They're mostly there for flavor, and to give the enemy the ability to fire back when you're besieging them with your mortars, so even an unlikely hit from them will be quite dangerous so watch out.

Finally, concrete fortifications will also appear in mid to high end bases, increasing in proportion with base development level. These will be quite the tough nuts to crack without artillery of your own, so come prepared if you want to take them out.

On top of all of these, there have also been some improvements behind the scenes. The foliage renderer has been updated, allowing us to get smaller and better scaled trees while making them notably denser. Trees will now react to wind as well!

Perhaps most importantly, the bug we had where some players sometimes ended up with a sea of floating trees should now be fixed. End of an era, this notorious bug has previously given us much headache and is hopefully gone for good now.

Shoreline detection and defense placement systems have already been updated to enable us to generate cohesive bases as well.

Finally, waves have been updated to match the shore, and you may feel a difference in severe storms.

Last, but not least, you will see all of these changes and possibly more on the Experimental Branch due to release next Friday!

That's all we have to share for now,
Captain,
T.T.

Feb 16, 2024

PATCH 0.8.1 - HEALTH BARS AND DROPS

The Black Pool - Mike of Smug Marmot

ENEMY HEALTH BARS

This patch, we have delivered one of our most requested features: enemy health bars. In addition to displaying the rank and hit points for medium and heavy enemies, all currently applied elemental effects are now visualized as colored bars. These bars provide greater clarity to elemental effects— how long they last, how much effect has been applied, and crucially, when the thresholds are about to be reached for time-limited effects such as frozen, blind, and brittle. Relevant numbers are also displayed, such as total damage amplification from decay, or the current damage over time amount from fire.

EVENT BARS

Bosses, flux events, and hold points now display event progress bars.

ENEMY DROPS

Enemies now have a chance to drop short term power-ups on death. These power-ups include: increased movement speed, next attack does double damage, a shield that absorbs 50% damage, increased attack speed, instant cooldown for all abilities (except rally), and a close-range attack ring for every element.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES AND IMPROVEMENTS

Two new levels (Skylands and Icelands, Upsilon Sectors)
Damage numbers have been enlarged, and health bars and other UI elements have been updated to improve legibility.
Updated visual effects for attacks from Jellyfish, Starfish, and flux parasites to be less visually dominating.
Wyld Stallyns music sequence: reworked and expanded the 1st and 3rd levels.
Added new challenge modes: Enemy Rank
Temple shortcut now orients players towards the map room vortex and avoids stacking players. Apologies if you loved this feature. We did too.
Molten Pillars Boss: Numerous updates and fixes to improve this boss encounter. Upper platforms are now easier to land on. Guidepoints have been added. Respawn points added to the top section, preventing players from having to re-do the platforming if they fall off. Lower platforms have been updated to prevent snagging, and they won’t shut down when the boss is defeated, avoiding a rare situation that can strand a player in multiplayer.
Numerous performance enhancements.

BALANCE UPDATES

Added a short invulnerability window to players when respawning from a fall.
Updated all elemental effects to last 5 → 6 seconds before falling off if not renewed.
Fire Abilities have been adjusted to account for the increase in effect duration from 5 to 6 seconds. Fire Effect damage number ticks now display in orange instead of gray.
Quick Fire and its augments now do 4X damage when hitting an enemy not already affected by fire. This improves fire versus light enemies, without breaking its already strong late game power.
Several small tweaks to player movement to reduce the frequency of snags on the environment.
Fireball: Greatly increased damage radius expansion when exploding, preventing situations where enemies may move out of range before being hit. Updated the visual effect to fizzle rather than explode when exceeding spell max range.
Frenzy: Reduced base augment attack rate penalty from 25% to 15%.
Implode: Reduced base damage by 15%.
Shocking Current: Tripled damage.
Lightning Strike: Reduced base damage penalty from 50% to 25%. Increased AOE radius of Lightning bolt strike.
Radiate: Reduced base damage by 25%.
Reburn: Updated to have its range extended before triggering a bounce back when increasing the projectile speed.
Light Cleave: Reduced base damage by 10%.
Underlord Boss: Increased hit points by 25%.
Icelands Boss: Added invulnerability window after all generators are destroyed to shed all elemental effect stacks.
Healing Challenge Modes: Increased heal reduction from 33% and 66% to 50% and 75%.
Jagged Peaks Boss: Updated leg laser walls to now block “hitscan” spells like lightning and Incinerate.

BUG FIXES

Obsidian Boss: Plasma wave attack now damages players again!
Fixed issue where guiding arrows could break and stop displaying.
Fixed a very rare issue that could cause a fatal error game crash.
Magnus Underlord boss: Fixed AI possibly breaking when an Underlord is killed in the first stage.
Fixed issue where Air Spawners could agro enemies and end up in a stuck AI state.
Molten Pillars Omega Sector: Fixed potential issues with spawns / triggers / enemies preventing level completion. (Thanks to Timothy for the heads up.)
Arc Lightning: Fixed issue where the attack was not visually arcing to hit targets.
Fixed multiplayer issue where a rally cast could drop 2 rally banners.

Many more smaller tweaks and bug fixes.

Try out the patch and let us know what you think of the new enemy health bars and power ups!