• Added a fast-forward feature with an integrated debugger for clear issues
  
• The camera now focuses on factories with warnings after you click on them
  
• Implemented multiple fixes to the soil cannon
  
• Rebalanced vegetable growth and yields
  
• Corrected storage issues; characters now transport items when filters are changed
  
• Addressed issues with golems sometimes not recharging and becoming stuck during factory production
  
• Adjusted decompose times for High-Tech golems
  
• Added Space food to the Cauldron
  
• Made minor adjustments to the value of items used in UFO encounters
  
• Enhanced the visibility of electric cables
  
• Made other minor rebalancing changes
  
• Updated translations for better clarity

We'll give you Atomic Plants and Orbital Stations in the next update.
After this, Earth will be complete, and the gameplay will move to space – first to Earth's orbit, then to the Moon, and finally to Mars!



With the new environments, you'll still need to keep an eye on all the previously built bases to produce enough materials for the new ones.

We hope you will enjoy the Fast Forward feature and that you're looking forward to building your bases and automating in space.

Let us know in the comments or on Discord.

shootinka, Revive & Prosper

Hey everybody.

Today we are releasing our first "Intermission". Intermissions will take place roughly halfway between major updates and will generally not contain any game content. Allowing the team a little longer to cook up the beta of the next big update.

For the first Intermission in the 2024 roadmap, we have an animated short, a new login bonus, a new Twitch drop, some new vignettes have been added and we have added some old Twitch Drops into Klei Rewards.

Don't Starve Together Animated Short: Projector
Who is the man behind the mysterious machinations that have been keeping our Survivors so busy as of late? Wagstaff was not always the successful industrialist he is now, but even back then he knew one thing to be true: who you really are is not nearly as important as the version of yourself that you project out to the world. 

Login Bonus



The “Scalloped Fishing Rod” is now available for a limited-time login reward. Simply log into the game and collect yours!
 

New Twitch Drops



The Rosy Red Amulet joins the Rose collection. Check out the post for more details
 

New Vignettes



We have added some new vignettes from previous animated shorts to the game!

Klei Rewards



The Nouveau Amulet, The Camellia Flowerbed, The Nouveau Thulecite Suit, The Nouveau Headpiece, The Nouveau Club, The Nouveau Deconstructor, The Eclectic Glowcap, The Nouveau Pan Flute and The Nouveau Crown have been added to Klei Rewards.

And some points!

Look - They aren't even "hidden" this time! Enjoy!

Coming Soon!

We hope that you enjoy our brief intermission. We'll return in a couple of weeks with some news and teasers for our next update which will contain a couple of new character skill trees and... Ocean QOL. You know, things I'm sure nobody has any strong opinions about. 

 

Dear Pinball Fans,

We are excited to announce that one of our fan-favorite originals is returning to Pinball FX just in time to celebrate one of the world’s biggest sporting events. EURO 2024!



To celebrate this event, we will grant you the biggest launch discount available on Steam, 40% off, between May 16 and 23. Guide your football team in their quest to become Super League Champions.*

We are happy to announce that our efforts have paid off, so we will be able to offer you the Super League Football table free of charge for 30 days, after its release on May 16 on Steam! Get it once and keep it forever. ;)



Table Features:

- Zen Studios F.C. is ready for victory! Guide your team of players sporting developer likenesses
- Launch your attack and score on the mini-playfield
- Master player skills in several different multiball modes each tied to must-have talents in football
- Fill your trophy cabinet with your progress saved between games
- Reach the Golden Goal Wizard Mode and shoot for stellar scores

With Pacific Rim Pinball and Universal Pinball: TV Classics, Super League Football will launch on May 16!

Mark your calendars for this huge pinball celebration!

Between 2nd-7th May 2024, we’ll donate a portion of every sale of the game from Hero of the Kingdom series to War Child UK. Make sure to grab your own discounted copy, gift one to a friend or let your community know about the sale to help children affected by war across the world.

This year’s Game Action is once again bringing together the gaming industry to highlight the importance of supporting children living in war zones. War Child work in the hardest to reach places to support those who are hardest hit, to protect, educate and stand up for the rights of children, when they need us most.

By purchasing a game during the sale you can help War Child raise thousands to fund vital projects in 14 countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, including Gaza, Ukraine, Democratic Republic of Congo and Yemen.

War Child UK is driven by a single goal – ensuring a safe future for every child affected by war.

Because no child should be part of war. Ever.

https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/WCUKGaming/sale/GameAction2024

Find out more about War Child here -
https://www.warchild.org.uk/our-work

Homeworld: Vast Reaches is now available on Meta Quest 2 & 3 and was just announced as coming to SteamVR later this year!

In Homeworld: Vast Reaches you play as Fleet Command, controlling your ships in vicious combat against a mysterious new enemy. Through a dramatic single-player campaign, direct your fleet to attack, defend, or capture strategic resources to build up your arsenal of ships and achieve victory.

Make sure you wishlist a copy today!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2949240/Homeworld_Vast_Reaches/



Experience this strategy space game through a new perspective — get up close and personal to epic space battles, commanding your ships in real-time all around you. Your fleet is at your fingertips in this new Homeworld story where you can execute strategic attacks on your enemies from any direction or angle. This new perspective in VR allows you to build units, shape fleet formations, and orchestrate combat tactics while you're in the middle of the action.



Set between the events of Homeworld 1 and Homeworld 2, you take on the role of Tyrra Soban, a new Fleet Command. Guiding you is Karan S’jet, the legendary hero, as the original Kushan Mothership is pulled from retirement to serve as the flagship of a new fleet. Together Tyrra and Karan face a new threat, the Radaa, duplicitous interstellar traders who want to obtain your hyperspace core and don’t care if they destroy your Homeworld to get it.

Wishlist your copy of Homeworld: Vast Reaches on Steam.
Play Homeworld: Vast Reaches on Meta Quest today!

Follow Homeworld: Vast Reaches on Social:
https://farbridge.com/homeworldvastreaches/ | X (Twitter) | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | Threads

A new horror is on the horizon in Pinball M! Put on the mask and rev the chainsaw - Leatherface returns to slaughter in pinball form on June 6!


Aim your shots and use all your skills to take out your victims in one of the most brutal pinball tables ever created.



Table features:

- Play as Leatherface and terrorize the new arrivals who dare come into your town
- Sneak up on unsuspecting victims by shooting the right targets to maim and massacre them
- It's a Bloodbath in the Bus! Lock 3 balls then watch the mayhem unfold
- RNN RRNNN RRRNNN! Keep revving the chainsaw to start a frenzy mode for increased points
- Complete all Main Modes to face off against the last survivors in Wizard Mode. Don't let anyone escape!

Get ready, as our most brutal table is coming to Pinball M on June 6!

Hi everyone,

Get ready for thrills! The Case of the Golden Idol is now included in Playstack's groundbreaking Publisher Sale, offering an incredible 40% off discount on the base game and 15% off on the DLCs!

Dive into our exceptional games at their most affordable prices yet! Whether you're a puzzle whiz or a fan of roguelike adventures, there's excitement in store for everyone.

Don't miss out – grab your preferred titles or look forward to exciting upcoming releases!




https://store.steampowered.com/app/1677770/The_Case_of_the_Golden_Idol/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/427410/Abiotic_Factor/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1274600/The_Last_Faith/

Added: Option to show dragon names instead of steam names in chat
Fixed: Duplicated story document
Fixed: Missing carry prompt in single-player mode
Fixed: Death's Grip killing players who take damage while de-buff is active
Fixed: Wyvern head textures
Fixed: Players not being able to climb a hill near spawn village
Fixed: /removexp command not working in some cases
Fixed: Some minor Wyvern mesh and animation issues.
Fixed: Structure decay once for all (be prepared and have enough upkeep materials in your totem)
Temporary Fix: For the infinite visual fire breath (might still happen due to high ping)
Optimized: Wyvern's fire breath

Hey folks,
it is time for another Dev Diary! It's been a while - huh?
You’ve already heard about our cards, our art and our voice actors, so let’s spice it up! Do you know how the part of the game that you can see comes together? That’s the magic of our Technical Artists 🪄

take the produced assets - be it buildings, characters or cards - bring them into the game, and make sure they’re connected properly so that they don’t only look pretty but are also functional.

Interested? Then let’s have a look at some Cards of Fate, shall we?
The process to reach the final VFX stage is as follows:
The Designers design a card and describe the look and mechanic, information which is collected in super-secret lists.
At the end, each card entry contains the name, the faction it’s assigned, which hero can play the card and how it should look in the game.
Our artists then take this information, and, knowing the visual style of our game the best, translate it into a Card artwork, like these:



Once a Developer has implemented the mechanics to make this card work, it’s our Technical Artists turn. They have a look at the secret list and the card artwork, then make the VFX come to life ✨.
When they have a version they can show, they post it to our artists and designers to get feedback. That’s it! Thanks for reading!

Of course not! There is more to it. VFX can go through many iterations until we get the final look to feel and play right. Let’s take our Heavenly Scouts card, for example. You might remember this look from the old Demo:



we knew we could do better. So that’s what we did!
We adjusted the play effect by adding more glowing circles around the army, highlighting the area. The symbol for Heavenly scouts now shows up later, with more glow, particles and rays, highlighting it to give it more visibility. The symbol also stays longer, giving the player time to appreciate the effect. Then, the lasting effect, which is visible for the card’s duration, got a stronger glow at the bottom, and is accompanied by golden birds at the top, just like in the card artwork. In the end, it looked like this!



This improvement process was done also for other cards, like Divine Revenge. This card deals damage to the enemy if your unit dies. To visualize this, we had... nothing.
So, we added a neat effect! The sword from the card artwork pierces the affected area. The affected units glow from within their bodies, ready to unleash the divine power to damage their enemies if they die in battle. A sword above their head marks them.




the card that summons Luminant knights onto the battlefield to aid your cause, look like this:


To give it the celestial vibe it deserves, we improved the build-up, adding more golden swirls that focus on a point of energy before exploding and raining down in a divine shower which spawn the Luminant knights.



We also have a little special card for you, one that has come with our new Demo update, along with a new neutral hero for you to play!

This Card makes a pile of gold appear on the battlefield. Blinded by their greed, the enemies rush to the pile, unaware that it 💥explodes 💥after a while, bringing them to their demise. To create this effect, first we started by creating the coins falling from the sky.



Adding a particle effect with a coin mesh and the corresponding texture, we added a collision to make them bounce off the ground.
For the pile of gold itself, we utilized some performance tricks. Instead of creating a mesh with hundreds of coins, we simulated coins falling on a pile in blender, to extract the coin texture into photoshop. We added some layers, to color it properly, and finally created a simple, low-poly mesh in the shape of a pile to add the coin texture. It works wonders!



Finally, adding a shader with a moving texture, some glow below the pile, some shadows, and sparkles coming from the magical coins, the gold looks really tempting, right? But there’s more to bring it all together! Some dust while the coins fall and the pile grows, a golden swirl highlighting the affected area upon playing the card, and the explosion effect with coins flying everywhere make this effect truly fun to watch and play.



Cool, right?
You might have noticed our cards have different colors. (Duh, you knew that already, you read our Dev Diaries!) We just covered some of the Battle cards (red), what about our strategy cards (blue)? Let’s look at the Adventure Card!
This one has been in the Demo for a long time, but we often got feedback that we should have more visual support to make them distinguishable. And you were right. Look at this, if it weren’t for the card, would you know you could explore this location?


Rhetorical question, of course not. So, we added a visual cue to make the location stand out more. Behind closed doors is something for you, and you get curious. But how can you figure it out? By dragging the Card over it? Exactly! And only after you’ve explored that location, does it return to normal.



is a new card, that you can try out on your own! But a simple hint: It helps you a lot!
Of course, you can build your camp around your unit while it’s not moving! Great for managing multiple units!
But how did it look like? Well, like... nothing?


So, we added some play effects consisting of some grey and golden construction smoke (so it’s visible on the light and dark side). After it’s gone, a small camp surrounds the army, consisting of tents, a small watchtower and a barricade, making sure no one enters. A small golden glow ensures that the camp has good contrast on all types of grounds.
Only after you move will the camp get destroyed and disappear.



you can not only manage your army, but also your Kingdom, or any location you possess, providing you have the required materials. Each location can have one additional building, like the Golden Temple, which you’ve seen and used in the Demo. This card increases your Divine Favor income and grants you knew recruitment options. But did you know it has some lore behind it?
At the top of the temple, bodies that have passed away are being burned, so they can ascend to the Celestials. But the old building implementation didn't show any of it!

So, we asked our artists! And they provided us with these overpaints! It’s not really visible here, but it got the point across: Add blue smoke with golden sparkles.

So, that’s what we did!





Additionally, we added more recruitment VFX. Before, in our old demo when you recruited a new unit, nothing happened, and the unit popped into existence out of nowhere. To show their different nature, we divided the recruitment options into 4 different ones with unique effects, which you can see here:



Making them fit into our yellow biome. To find that perfect color balance that fits into a dark or green or red or YELLOW biome. You know why this is so hard? Because almost ANY sparkling and golden glow effect gets lost in our yellow biome!
You can best see it on these Lootwagon Effects. Each color represents another rarity.

On the darker side, the colorful sparkles and swirls are well visible and give shape to the light beam. To make these also visible on our green and yellow biomes, we added a black glow behind the beams. They’re not visible in the dark biome, not only give depth to the beams in the lighter biomes, but also add contrast to make them visible.



For different ways of how we handled contrast, simply look at this fire effect:


Even if it's small, you notice the red fire of doom immediately on the dark side map, but the black smoke gets lost. It’s exactly the other way around on the light side map. For this effect, we made use of the main colors present, and added them in a well contrast.



As you see, we’re putting a lot of time and effort to not only provide you with a story-rich game with amazing mechanics on the strategy map and in the battles, but also to make them feel good. Whether it be by improving the timings of the effect to make the impact go “Whoomph”, add visual cues to make it more understandable, or simply make them look better.

Thank you for reading, we hope this Dev Diary helped you understand our Technical Artists VFX process more!

Lots of love!
Ilcin & the Chimera Team

1. Rewriting the proposal. Rewriting the proposal in ancient Chinese
2. Optimize the terrain model to avoid the loading of some machines and the running of them is not smooth