This update adds a ton of lumber mill themed props, like new modular buildings, moving log chain, smoke stacks, log piles, and more!

You can find all of these new props in the "buildings -> Mill (1 & 2)" drawers:




One of the new moving parts of a lumber mill, the log chain! This is used to pull logs from the log pond into the inside of the mill. There are a few different sizes and style variants.




The other new moving part for a lumber mill is the green chain, this is a conveyor which takes the freshly cut planks out of the mill so they can be sorted into sizes.




Lots of new log props! Including individual logs and big log stacks:



Also various drying stacks of planks:




A new set of modular smoke stack props, as well as some roof details:











The largest part of this update is a set of new modular buildings! These can be used for rail sheds (witch openable doors) or any building made with planks:




A very simple feature that's incredibly useful, there is now a full set of tables that have no sides, so they are just a flat surface. These are excellent for making water effects:




Some props (like the log chain and openable doors) now have an arrow visible when placing them on the ground, to help make it clear which way they are facing:



There are also a few bug fixes:

• level crossings no longer trigger from cars when they are set to "automatic" mode
  
• the "packaged mods" and "packaged assets" options are now visible when uploading a main menu map scene to the Steam Workshop (these were missing before)
  
• Fixed bugs with turntables being included in grouped track. A turntable can no longer be the first item in a group (it can still be included in a group, it just cant be the first piece of track selected)

You're probably wondering why the sudden lumber mill theme?
That's because it's part of the next major map release I'm working on, the "Sierra Logging" expansion!
This map is set in California during the historic logging boom in the Sierra mountains. Specifically the towns of Tuolumne, Jamestown, and the West Side Lumber Company!
There will be lots more info released about this map in the future, but it will involve a ton of new props being added into the game (just like these ones).
I'll be releasing props like these in updates as they are made, instead of waiting till the whole map is finished, since this will be a big project.

These props especially were all made to re-create the Tuolumne mill:

Fix CG set unlock error
Fix research card error
Fix the issue of the possibility of direct progression to End during interaction
Fix the problem of unclear map indicators
Fix/balance the issue of low volume of HINA's voice
Add achievement system

Hey there! Great to see you all again!

I'm excited to share all the new content we have in Battle Talent for you this month! Now, you can place traps, items, and even decorations in the game scene and use them to your advantage!





These features are also available in MR mode, giving your battle talent journey endless possibilities and fun.




As per our tradition with every update, we've got two epic weapons! The first one: the Bloodthirster Scimitar! This is a bleeding blade that is impossible to resist.




The other weapon is the Spellgun. You can enchant your bullets with different magical properties and unleash them upon your enemies!



We have also prepared a new castle appearance as this year is the Year of the Dragon in Chinese tradition. Exercise caution with fireworks! 



In the challenge dungeon, we have also added a new transition scene from the church to the sky ruin.



We have also made some changes to the appearance of the Wraith and added some commonly used presets in the modifier, to make it easier to meet your needs!

We hope you enjoy them. Feel free to join our community to provide feedback and interact with fellow players. Although it's a bit late, we wish you all a happy Lunar New Year!

- Dev&Moderator team -

---

Change log for V11P7
> New Content
- New weapons: Bloodthirsty Scimitar/ Spell Gun
- Can use fire spell to enchant fire to weapons
- New castle theme: The Year of the Dragon
- Quest3 Mixed Reality Mode update
- Can place items and traps
- Adjust lighting position and parameters
- New dungeon rooms

> Adjustments
- Refresh Wraith model
- Add presets in the Modifier menu
- Can spawn random NPCs/Weapons in the cheat menu
- Game effects improvement

Hello, fellow Survivors.

Last week, we talked about our original intentions for the monsters at the core of our game, and how the concept of "Plague-ridden Corpses" came about from a narrative and art perspective.

However, as you'll see in the current Early Access version, the narrative and art concepts for these Infested have once again undergone major changes, and today we're going to show you how and why.

Third Setting: The Journey of a Knight who Vowed to Reclaim a “Holy Relic”

I mentioned earlier that we wanted to give the characters a sense of purpose, and that this led us to the idea of a pilgrim's journey to the Holy Land.

The idea of traveling to a specific location in an apocalyptic situation is a trope that's been borrowed heavily from zombie media, most notably Death Road to Canada, and we thought that if we could create a sort of "Medieval Road Movie" type of setting, we could create a pretty unique narrative experience.



After making the initial stages of that version, we also worked on a rough trailer to show at exhibitions and such. At that time, the title of our game was "Before the Dawn".



However, as we started to flesh it out, we started to get feedback that the experience was a little more bland than we hoped.

We had a long discussion about why it wasn't feeling as emotionally engaging as we initially thought and came to the conclusion that unlike real-time survival games, the stage-based, turn-based tactical genre expects more meaningful objectives to be presented "on every stage".

Whereas in survival games, where things keep changing over time even if you remain still, the environment itself keeps you on your toes without the need for a strong “scripted” crisis.
In turn-based tactics, where you experience each stage in isolation, the experience becomes more repetitive when you feel like, “The enemies change over the course of three stages, but all I'm doing is the same thing: gathering supplies and staying alive.”

To create a little more intrigue in the characters' journey, we came up with the idea of giving them an intermediate goal to collect something a little more “special” along the way to the final ending.

In keeping with the “Medieval” and “Holy Land” themes, we decided to create a “Holy Relic” that would be the only thing in the game with “Supernatural” powers.



At this point, we were implementing the Choice system for expressing humanity that we shared in the previous archive, so we needed a “Protagonist character" who would be the "Agent of Choice".

So naturally, the whole narrative went from being a “road movie of ordinary medieval people” to a “journey of a knight sworn to recover a holy relic.” We wanted to tell the story of a knight in an apocalyptic situation who has to retrieve a holy relic, meeting various companions and facing various dilemmas along the way.

The knight would later become the inspiration for the main character "Willam" in the Early Access version.

Fourth Setting: Remore Struggles Against a “Medieval Unknown Species”

We've talked about this in past Archive posts, as we realized that the cost of implementing an options system was much higher than expected and decided to focus on tactics.

This decision naturally had a huge impact on the narrative foundation. Because whereas in previous versions, "Combat" was a sort of narrative "Means of Survival" and secondary to the overall gameplay experience, in this fourth version it is now the core of the game.

Previously, only the "Protagonist" had a "Combat-specific" class called "Knight" to serve the narrative goal of the vow and to give them more differentiated combat abilities, while other characters were “Generic Medievalists" such as "Monk/Nun," but in the new direction, each class needed to have unique combat abilities...

This led to a design concept for the starting classes that would give the traditional Knight a One-handed weapon specialization with a Shield, the Outsider a powerful damage dealer with a Two-handed weapon, and the Militia a support attack role who used a Spear or Bow.



There was also a need to make the end goal of the game more “Active.” This was because the previous version was a kind of "Storytelling Survival Game" that used turn-based tactics, but the new direction was focused on "Combat" and "Killing Enemies.”

In fact, it wasn't as easy as we thought it would be to come up with a "clean, satisfying ending that the player can choose," while still maintaining the feel of a "Zombie Movie", because we felt that in a world where most people have already been turned into zombies, it doesn't feel natural to have the world go back to normal because you did something, unless there's some sort of convincing setup.

So, it seems that in a lot of zombie-centric narratives, the "Main Antagonists" of the story turn out to be the humans themselves. Whether it's a leader of a group of survivors who takes advantage of an apocalyptic situation to oppress people, or a villain who unleashes his inner psycho he's been hiding when times were good, it's often a "specific group of humans" that drives the story.

The Cultist group we revealed in Early Access was designed to be just that: a group that was "discriminated against by the people of Remore and now taking advantage of the situation for a chance at revenge," with evidence of their brutal "Rituals" to create a sense of crisis and pose a threat to the player base...



However, setting the Cultists as the "Arch-enemy" of the entire game felt out of place - they were good enough as "Supporting Villains" to add variety to the overall experience, but if they were going to be the end goal of the game, they needed to have some sort of appeal or intensity to them.

We believe that creating compelling villains is just as difficult as creating compelling protagonists, if not more so, and we were concerned the cost of narrative expression needed to achieve what we had in mind would be too much, given our "Tactics-focused" direction.

The idea was, "Since this is a game where the creatures are the primary enemies, why not create a new creature setting that doesn't necessarily have to be tied to the zombie sensibility, but could be big enough to be the final boss?"

It doesn't make sense for monsters to have their own intelligence or goals when they're still "Zombies," so a story that says, "You defeated the final boss zombie, and the world went back to normal" feels awkward and forced.

But if there is a separate species of monsters that are not “Zombies” but somethings capable of a kind of “Volition,” and they are “Turning” the humans of Remore into monsters, then it seemed that it would naturally lead to the conclusion that by killing them, we could at least prevent the apocalypse from getting any worse.

However, we felt that it would be good to have an entity that was “Different from Humans” and felt threatening, that couldn't communicate directly with humans, but could still have its own “Rules of Engagement,” so we came up with the idea of an “Insect” concept, an unknown species, focusing on the swarming behavior of ants/bees/etc. We jokingly and half-seriously said, "This is going to be like medieval XCOM...".



If you've been paying close attention to the dialog following Alldris' rescue in the monastery, you'll recall that he mentions something called "Land Eaters" after fleeing the capital city of Broken Rock. These are the ones that must be "Finally Defeated," an insect-like unknown species.



This unknown species emerged through a "Tear" in the sky - the one that "suddenly opened up one day," as the intro suggests - to make the land of Remore habitable for themselves, and they would capture the Remore people and turn them into "Cocoons”. The idea was that these cocoons would hatch and become "Infested" - insect-human fusions like the Knawer, Blister and Skulker.



To express this “Insect-human Fusion” concept, a sort of upper-layer skin texture was adopted, and a design adopted that would maintain the overall human “Body Shape” but express insect features, mainly in the jaw area.



This is how the narrative and art of the "Infested" you see in the Early Access version came to be.

However, as it turned out, this direction would have its own problems! So, along with the current big gameplay changes the narrative concept itself is undergoing its own transformation!

We’ll explain the next step of the concept change in a future post but next week, we’d like to give a little insight into our narrative representation of the Middle Ages, since we have yet to set the stage for our current keywords "Medieval" and "Monsters".

Thank you for sticking with us, and a special big thank you to those of you who commented on our last post for being so supportive!

We feel it is imperative to share our progress and intention in this way as we're about to make some big changes after a long period of no live updates since releasing the game in Early Access, but seeing the players' reactions is very motivating (Because we feel ultimately that these changes are for the benefit of the player!) :)

We'll be posting tirelessly until we can implement and showcase this new direction!

As always, thank you so much!
REMORE

2 years, wow! When I first started making Squarena, I didn't think it would turn into a fully-fledged game. I thought I was making something for just family and friends to enjoy together, but I took that and continued to work on it. I am grateful to be able to spread joy and help people connect and have fun!

Here are some highlights from this update:

• New arena added - "Tech Tile"
  
• Powerup sprites completely remade and upgraded. Some work was done to the powerup code as well.
  
• Pausing mechanic has been improved. Now it is a true pause!
  
• Made a selection of new and improved artwork for some of the level objects (mainly walls) and added feature to be able to blend walls together more pleasantly.
  
• Backend optimizations
  
• Removed "tutorial" from the main menu. Now you can customize your character first and then enter the tutorial directly from character select.
  
• Changed "New Game" to "Play" on the main menu
  
• Started some backend work in preparation for eventually releasing on other platforms.

I hope everyone enjoys!

Jordan
Codeaclysm Games

Hello, this is the Trouble Shooter development team.

Today, an unknown database error occurred and we corrected this error. However, for a more stable gaming environment, we would like to conduct a temporary check on Asian server.

The maintenance will be 15 minutes and we will reopen the servers as soon as the maintenance is complete.

Temporarily Maintenance Schedule:

- Date: 2024 March 1st, Friday
- Time: 17:30~ 17:45 (GMT + 9)

We're really sorry for the disruption to your gameplay once again.

We'll do our best to fix it as soon as possible!

We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience!

• 3 new floors added to Sneaking! They're filled with new creepy hotel guests waiting to detect your ninja twins, increased Jade and EXP gain, strong doors to break down, and new drop tables full of new charms, weapons, and hats!
• 10 new Jade Emporium purchases, one of which unlocks Sovereign Artifacts! Sorry eldritch, sovereign is now my best friend.
• 4 new Pristine charms added! These can be found on any floor, just like before -- to clarify for those that dont know, any room can drop any pristine charm, and now theres 4 more!
• Added 10 new Arcade bonus upgrades, several of which are in this update's Arcade Shop Rotation (rotation will go live after iOS version is live), and others will come in later rotations


• Removed a 1 pixel-wide hitbox in the MAP ui between "World" buttons and the map that would close the map. Some may consider me a hero for doing this.



Hopefully the chance I catch you being a noob is 0%.... go get those new bonuses! ːGrumbloː

Good night,
LavaFlame2 ːSmile_IdleOnː

-Enabled experimental video settings in the settings menu. Resolution can be changed through this or by pressing F1/F2.

I am glad to say that I found a publisher (Freedom games) to help me with console releases. I can talk more about this in the future, let's go back to the game itself for now.

I was going to make some updates related to Plano effects but I ran out of time. Therefore I will push a quick update in 1-2 days with many new Plano effects. This patch was mainly about having the possibility to create multiple decks (30 slots overall).

Now I want to cover some features we can implement in the future. Let's discuss!


Since I slowed down the patch release pace a bit I started with some clean up in the project and I added a couple of changes to the cards to make them more "understandable".

I am also planning on adding a new game mode that is based on a TCG format. I think for a digital game it's better to have very dynamic battles, however, TCGs are a different story.

Since I would like to experiment with a TCG someday, I think it'll be cool to add a game mode now that we can experiment with. The TCG format should still keep the "simple" aspect of the game while making battles a bit longer. I think this is also a good way to add more content since every battle can be played in 2 different ways.

The only problem with this is the game wasn't conceived with other game modes in mind so there might be some bugs and changes will happen over a couple of patches. The most
tricky part is definitely the Plano effect descriptions.

For now here is the concept I have:

a) New win condition. Turns will start at 40 instead of 16 and if you don't have any card left to draw you lose.
b) Each player will have his own Vortex (previously Black hole)?.
c) Only one card is drawn each turn instead of 5.
d) Cards in hand don't go to the Vortex (previously Black hole) at the end of the turn.
e) MG increased to 8000?.
f) All stats and effect numbers are divided by 100 for easier calculations? For example a 2200 HP will be 22 HP only. 500 effect damage will become 5 damage only.
The MG will be 80 instead of 8000. I am not sure about this one.
g) Disable residual space counters? A bit tricky since some Planos have effects related to it.

Let me know if you have some extra ideas.

So it seems like many people are interested in a Story mode but I am still not sure about this one. This is why I would like to get more feedback about it.

Here are a couple of problems:

a) I don't want to spend time on a story only for people to skip all the dialogue.
b) The story won't be as good as the manga version and will have an alternative ending that's more adapted to a video game.
c) Late release. This is definitely my mistake. However, if I release a story and the difficulty slowly increases with it most people will find it boring
because they already have maxed out decks before playing it. The only way I can see this working is if the story mode is after the Astral link mode (winning against
all the characters in the map) and will have maxed out difficulty (very strong decks) from the start.
d) Player freedom. Initially I wanted to have characters unlock one by one but I think that's a bit limiting in terms of what you can do. It might be more interesting to have all the characters
unlocked at once and you choose your own way of making progress (especially once there is actual progression). This is especially true for a game without a story mode (at least for now).

This is why I am hesitating a bit with a story mode. If you have other ideas for the story let me know. I want to make sure I spend my time on features that people want.

• It's about time I add the avatar creation haha. I will add it and the battle tutorial will be a must watch with it before starting the game.
  
• Player level system with a choice of 3 random Dark cards after each level up.

• FIX: Fixed Dark forms not having the same stats as Regular forms for costs.
  
• FIX: Fixed an issue where the Jupiter starter deck has non-Jupiter cards.
  
• FEATURE: Unlocked all deck slots (x30) with EDIT, DELETE, MAIN, COPY actions.
  
• GAMEPLAY: All level 2+ Planos can now overdrive even without an evolution.
  
• GAMEPLAY: Card usage is now a stat that is tracked for each card (the card will border changes at some point, not implemented yet).
  
• BALANCING: Nerfed the Chiiru line effect to 30 EP per level instead of 100.
  
• BALANCING: Nerfed the Nendochi line effect to 200 per level.
  
• TEXT: Renamed "PlanosGod" to just "God".
  
• TEXT: Renamed "Number of possible attacks" to "Number of attacks".
  
• TEXT: Renamed "Black hole" to "Vortex".
  
• TEXT: Changed "Training" in menu to "Tutorial" (until image tutorials are added).
  
• TEXT: Fixed playstyle descriptions when selecting decks.
  
• LOGIC: Changed Plano naming system.
  
• LOGIC: Changed Mazai naming system.
  
• CONTENT: Added new Plano effect (x1).
  
• CONTENT: Removed Plano Zodiac Signs.
  
• CONTENT: Removed all Dark Plano effects based on regular Planos (x100).
  
• VISUAL: Updated card boxes for effects and overdrive.
  
• VISUAL: Added pre-evolution image on cards.
  
• VISUAL: Changed Vortex animation in battle.
  
• VISUAL: Fixed a glitch on menu button images.
  
• VISUAL: Changed settings button in menu.
  
• VISUAL: Added comma to high blue stardust currency numbers.
  
• VISUAL: Card previews now show how many times a card has been used.
  
• VISUAL: Cards in deck viewer are now sorted (element selection).
  
• UI: Changed the "Roadmap" button to a "manga" button.
  
• UI: Removed disabled buttons in menu.

If you haven't picked up Myst yet, now is your opportunity! It's on sale for 40% off as a part of the Women's Day Sale.

Myst (2021) was created and led by a talented team of developers composed of both men and women. We're happy to celebrate this through the Women's Day Sale and celebrate the women who helped bring the Myst remake to life!

If you've already played Myst and want to play the original versions of it, check out the "Myst: Through the Ages" bundle here. Check out how Myst has evolved over time!

If you've already picked up all of those other versions of Myst, be sure to pick up the rest of the series here in the "Myst 30th Anniversary Collection". See how the saga of Myst concludes!