Feb 29

CACTUS - Axon Flux

Landing Some Hits

Hey folks!

As February comes to a close, it’s time for our monthly roundup.

This time, we’re coming at you with a much-requested, new player ability, fresh impressions of the 5th story level and a bunch of new enemies. With Speed Design, we also launched a new video format that gives you a relaxing glance behind the scenes.

Oh, and there’s a hidden BONUS FEATURE at the end of this Devlog :]

Here we go!

Progress Report

We've got so much to show this time, that we opted to spread out all the info into several smaller videos that are easier to digest. So keep reading :]

Fists Will Fly

You asked for it, we’ve built it: Player Melee is finally here!

This was one of the most requested features amongst players and in hindsight, it’s obvious why. With fists covered in needles, you naturally want to deal some bloody noses.

So, here we go!

Using melee is a simple and effective way to destroy enemies and objects:

Just hit the punch key and smack right out.
Tap repeatedly for a continuous stream of left and right hooks.

Of course, this ability can be mapped to any key or mouse button in settings, ensuring perfect access in tight situations.

Amidst The Cliffs

Jerry is currently designing the first major temple that players will explore. A sacral architecture hidden in the canyon that aims to evoke a deep dungeon atmosphere.

Take a look at these early blockout shots of Story Level 5:

Filled with destructibles and prolonged battles combat, this level is set to be rich in combat. Particularly, because the Desert Turtle will be introduced here, setting a major gameplay beat.

To loosen up the pace, simple puzzles and pitfalls will diversify gameplay and force you to be vigilant. They also provide your triggerfinger with some well-deserved rest.

Heavyweight Foes

Speaking of big enemies: Pierre, our 3D artist, and Robert, who tackles the last month of his concept art internship, are creating some seriously strong enemies.

Here’s a quick rundown of the two:

Desert Turtle

The Desert Turtle is a ranged enemy that launches homing rocks at you. Keep your distance to avoid its massive stomp attack.

It’s weaknesses are slow movement and the soft spots not protected by the shell. So keep moving and aim precisely to take out the Turtle.

Black Rhino

The Black Rhino is a steamroller-type enemy. When charging at you, it plows through anything in its way, regardless if friend or foe.

Avoid being hit by it’s horn, which deals severe damage and sends you flying high. Instead, try to dodge laterally and keep firing needles to dispose of the Rhino properly.

🐀 We recently added another new enemy. Check it out here:

Meet The Rat

Maximum Sh*tshow

We told you about the Dung Beetle in the last issue. Now it’s fully implemented and ready to go, so we’ve put together a little showcase for you to watch.

💩 Check up on the Dung Beetle:

Read Devlog 17

Speed Design

Lastly, we want to give you more glances into development over the coming weeks and months. As a first step, our new Speed Design series shows you how we build levels using relaxing timelapses.

In this first episode, it’s about Hideout, the scene used to create the Melee Showcase video.

🗨️ Tell us your opinion about the new format, so we can improve:

Join Our Discord

BONUS: Death Cam Ragdoll

For too long, CACTUS lacked a properly staged player death sequence. This ends now!

If you die, you’ll now see a ragdoll Cactus being knocked across the scene, bouncing into objects while the camera follows and zooms along. Hopefully, this will numben the pain of failure a bit.

What's Next?

The coming month will be a hardening phase, where we beef up the first five levels and make them available to testers. Meanwhile, our artist will create even more enemies for our coder to implement.

We’ll also release news about industry events in 2024 soon. After all, putting the new stuff into your hands and receiving feedback is not only vital, but also good fun.

Have a nice weekend!

Get In Touch

Feb 29

WARBONDS: Supporting the Galactic War Effort

Community Announcements - truliartruliar

What would a Helldiver be without their equipment? Our Deputy Game Director, Sagar Beroshi, sat down to talk to us about the Warbond system in HELLDIVERS 2!

What is a Warbond?
“We're trying to model a unique type of live service with the Warbonds. They're like getting a treasure chest full of toys,” Sagar says. And he’s right: the Warbonds are your ticket to fighting the Galactic War in style with lots of unlockable gear, but they reflect the changing tides of war on Super Earth as well. “It's been a century since the last game, and Super Earth is starting to get its military-industrial complex churning again. And to whom would it be better to offer gear than the Helldivers?”

The items available will each have unique features that can offer a variety of tactics for play. “You're going to see some really cool items in the game, each one giving you different ways to approach problems within missions. So, get ready to armor up, drop in, and erase some enemy scum.”

How do they work?
Warbonds give you access to multiple pages of unlockable content that can be obtained in a couple of different ways. Apart from the first Warbond—Helldivers Mobilize
—which has been graciously gifted to you by Super Earth, you can unlock new Premium Warbonds using Super Credits. Super Credits can either be purchased from the in-game store or discovered in missions by exploring points of interest.

Once you own a Warbond, you spend your hard earned medals to unlock your desired toys. Medals are awarded by completing objectives, missions, and operations. Medals can also be found the old-fashioned way by exploring the battlefield.

Do you hate FOMO? We do! Sagar wants to be clear about the monetization in HELLDIVERS 2: “At Arrowhead, we're gamers too, and we want these Warbonds to feel modern, fun, and in line with the Arrowhead style. This is important to us: the Warbonds are NOT a pay-to-win, FOMO-driven system. Instead, the gear in the Warbonds just keeps accumulating. We will not retire earlier Warbonds as new ones are released - you can pick them up and complete them at any time!”

The JAR-5 Dominator, with its jet-propelled high-damage projectiles, is part of the Steeled Veterans Premium Warbond.

Buying Warbonds - At a Glance

To get access to the Warbond and unlock items, follow these simple steps!

Buy Super Credits (your virtual in-game currency) from the in-game “ACQUISITIONS” store, or discover whilst on in-game missions.
Head in-game and browse the Warbond catalogues – check out all that gear you could unlock!
Buy your Warbond of choice with your purchased Super Credits.
Complete missions to earn Medals (your in-game reward currency).
Spend those Medals to unlock more content from the Warbond catalogue.

Feb 29

Ratopia Dev Diary #24 - Electricity Structures and Engineering Tech Tree

Ratopia - Cassel Games

Hello all, it’s Cassel, developer of <Ratopia>.
This February also passed in a whirlwind of development. The original plan was to carry out a major update within February. However, during our internal testing, numerous shortcomings were revealed. Moreover, the development was further delayed due to the Lunar new year, ultimately preventing us from achieving our development goals as intended.

We cannot keep postponing the schedule indefinitely, so we have decided to proceed with the update next week. We aim to quickly address the parts that have not yet been developed through subsequent updates. Despite dedicating as much time as possible to development over the month, it's disappointing that things didn't go as planned. It has been a time for reflection, wondering if we attempted to add too much all at once.

There is also a discount planned for next week!

During the preparation for this update, we undertook many experimental attempts. Now, I will introduce the newly added electricity structures and the engineering research tree.

Electricity Structures

Electricity structures are broadly categorized into those that generate electricity, manage it, and consume it. The newly added electricity generation structures include a Ratpower Generator that uses the working hours of Ratizens, a Wind Turbine that utilizes space, a Hydroelectric Generator that harnesses the flow of water, and a Thermal generator that uses resources. We aimed to diversify the necessary elements for production, allowing the selection of a generation method that suits the city's situation.

Generating electricity often leads to the city's finances running dry.

However, the problem was explaining the functions of structures with different electricity generation methods. We added UI and help sections to explain the new features, but it was challenging to easily convey how much electricity each generator could produce. Most generators have a structure where the amount of electricity produced varies depending on the situation, leading to significant variations and making it difficult to provide an average value.

We tried various approaches, but all were unsatisfactory, and we are still looking for a solution. The construction diary, which shows the amount of electricity produced in the previous 24 hours, was somewhat useful information that could be utilized. However, it had a critical drawback: it was impossible to know the amount before 24 hours had passed since installation.

We'll have to see if the explanations are adequate.

In any case, the electricity generated by the generators must be stored in electricity storage structures through power lines. If the power lines are not properly connected, the electricity produced by the generators will disappear, prompting considerations on how to install power lines within limited space and resources. Additionally, electricity exceeding the storage capacity of the storage structures will also disappear, making it necessary to carefully plan where to build sufficient electricity storage structures.

There are two types of power Transmission Wires: one that Ratizens can pass through and another, the Transmission Block, which Ratizens cannot pass through but can step on. We designed it so that these could be mixed and matched according to the situation. Furthermore, in the latter stages, we made it possible to transmit electricity over long distances wirelessly without connecting power lines through Tesla Towers.

The primal joy of connecting electrical grid!

Electricity transmitted to the electricity storage structures can be used through electricity-consuming structures. However, connecting all the electricity-consuming structures with power lines could be too cumbersome, so we made it possible for them to be supplied with electricity simply by being built near the electricity storage structures. To facilitate this, it was necessary to implement features that show how far the electricity supply can reach and how much electricity is remaining.

It's similar to the Pylon in <StarCraft>.

Among the electricity-consuming structures, we planned not only those that can increase the city's productivity but also those intended to enhance the player's convenience. An upgraded version of the Mailbox, the Communication Tower, allows for the remote adjustment of settings for structures located at very distant locations. Similarly, an upgraded version of the Crematory, the Electric Crematory, which is reusable, is also planned to be added soon.

Why we cannot just use Thermal Generator as a Crematory? Well it would not generate power then, you silly!

We've also added a Drone Hangar, a structure designed to alleviate many of the inconveniences expressed by our users. The Drone Hangar facilitates large-scale construction projects in the later stages of the game by deploying drones. In the late game, there are often not enough surplus Ratizens to carry out mining or construction orders, leading to exploration and city expansion progressing very slowly and frustratingly. The drone hangar was planned as a solution to this problem.

Once a drone hangar is built, drones are launched from the hangar to start work on orders before the Ratizens. However, finding paths for drones could have required significant computation, potentially jeopardizing the game's performance. To minimize computation, we reduced the size of drones to 1x1 and allowed them to fly and move only around the drone hangar area. As a result, drones can perform tasks in aerial locations that Ratizens cannot reach, without causing excessive computational load due to pathfinding.

Move at the speed of Mach 10, you maggots!

Having introduced the structures related to electricity production, transmission, and consumption, we plan to continue improving the game by adding a variety of new structures. If you have any fun ideas for structures, please leave a comment!

Engineering Research Tree

Many users found the existing research tree challenging. Since the structures were categorized by their functions such as foundation, production, and service, it was common for the game to progress with the structures needed to produce the required materials for operating new structures not being researched yet. For example, it was possible to research structures that required stone without having researched the Masonly, often leading to situations where they couldn't actually be used.

Thank you for your valuable feedback.

In light of these issues, we felt that incorporating the new electricity structures into the existing research tree could exacerbate the mentioned problems. To generate electricity, generators, electricity storage structures, and Transmission Wires are needed, and there are separate electricity-consuming structures. Users had to navigate through the research screen to find and research various electricity structures, and there was potential confusion if electricity-consuming structures were built before the generators. As more structures became available for research, the existing research tree became increasingly complex and inconvenient.

Therefore, in this update, we introduced a new structure called the Engineering Workbench, allowing users to research electricity structures separately. In the Engineering Research Tree, we decided not to use the conventional function categorization and instead arranged the research slots according to the game's progression order.

Arranging the Research Tree According to Progression Order.

The new electricity research tree was easier to understand and more convenient, but there were still minor elements that needed to be addressed. It was necessary to add category icons for the structures on the research screen and to enable the system to handle simultaneous research with the existing research bench.

It seemed like a good idea to similarly subdivide the existing research tree into categories such as beginner/advanced research or carpentry/masonry research. However, considering that the game is still in early access and continuously adding new structures, it feels premature. We plan to reconsider this approach once the game is more complete. In the meantime, careful consideration is needed to ensure there are no issues with implementing such changes.

This update added so much content that even testing it was enjoyable. However, with that comes a mountain of improvements that need to be made, making next month incredibly busy as well. In the next development diary, we will introduce content that we couldn't cover this time, focusing on the new biome, the Volcanic Biome.