May 3, 2024

Blood Rush - MaxEstLa

Hey !
The demo has been out for 3 weeks now, and I worked a lot on it to make it better. The updates were frequent, but I did not find time to write a changelog on Steam, so I'm doing it today.

First of all, thank you all for the feedback on the game. Everything has been really encouraging for the future of Blood Rush. The first two days after the release of the demo, over 2500 players played it! This is a lot! On some occasions, some of the players found glitches and crashes. I took the time to investigate what I could, and all the crashes that were reported have been solved.

I also took some time to optimize the game (even if it was already really fine as it was), there have not been any major balance changes to not disturb the speedrunning community.

Important updates:
- Hephaistos will now give you a gun earlier. Previously, you had to die before receiving your first gun.
- The FOV is now based on your vertical resolution. The game looks way better on wide screens.
- You can now opt out of the game analytics data collection. (Sorry for not shipping with the option.)
- I added back buttons to some menus to make them clearer. (community suggestion)
- Upgrading an ability with an elemental effect will color the ability icon. (Community suggestion)
- I updated the Thorns model to make it brighter and clearer. (Community suggestion)

Performance updates :
- The damage diplayed has been redone from scratch to improve performance. You can expect a good performance boost when damaging a lot of enemies.
- Most of the core code is now converted to C++.
- For smaller configurations, the blood stains now disappear after some time.

Balance changes :
- Argos is now a bit easier and does not attack from the gound with a root anymore.
- Buffed weapon switching speed upgrade.
- Tweaked the flow system to grant more flow from diverse actions.
- Removed a debuff for the tier V Harmonica.
- Bishops can no longer push while being possessed.

Other changes :
- Most enemies have a small portrait now in the debugun.
- Any mob can now be granted a boss health bar in the debug zone.
- Added a ticking sound at the beginning of timed rooms.
- You can no longer access the second hub by dying again and again in the tutorial.
- The save slot displays the accumulated money you earned (instand of your current amount).
- The hitmarker will flash red when killing an enemy (community suggestion).
- Hitting spacebar will skip dialogues (community suggestion).
- Added coffins in the catacombs.
- Optimized code.

Fixes :
- Fixed a lot of typos.
- Fixed a navmesh issue in Vires.
- Fixed an issue where enemies stopped their movement when the player was too high.
- Fixed an issue where the player was able to softlock himself if they tried to open the upgrade menu before they loaded.
- Fixed an dup money glitch.
- Fixed a bug where the inspect animation (or the lack of) prevented the player from using spells.
- Fixed some trigger box blocked the dash or slam.
- Fixed an issue where you were able to stack the credit screen again and again.
- Fixed an exploit where Argos could be burned before the fight.
- Fixed a place where corridors could overlap and softlock the player.
- Fixed the timer displaying a wrong time on death. (This did not affect speedruns.)
- Fixed a crash occurring from melee.
- Fixed a crash occurring when dying 0.5 seconds after finishing a room.
- Fixed an issue where you could leave the upgrade table with 150/100 health.
- Fixed the location of some blood stains.
- Fixed a priority issue in some AIs.

I'll be working for the future release in early access as of now. I'll also work on UpGun and projetc BLARI to provide some updates.

Max'

May 3, 2024

Version 3.84 released

UnReal World - Sami of Enormous Elk

Version 3.84 (stable) is now released and live for all the supported operating systems.

Version 3.84 continues the ongoing transition to make all the crafting tasks pausable, features a good deal of related crafting requirement changes, adds BOWYER skill, introduces springs as a new water source and naturally offers a fistful of bugfixes too.

In the midst of big changes in regards to pausable crafting we hope for the bugs to be scarcer than average adventurer's nutrition levels. ;) And whatever is encountered we do our best to maintain a swift update cycle to overcome the issues as early on as possible.

Here's the changelog:

Version 3.84 (stable) changelog

** Saved characters from version 3.80-> are compatible with this version. **

- added: BOWYER skill

The bowyer skill is the ability and knowledge to make bows. Success in the skill determines the quality of the bows crafted. For migrated characters this skill is created upon the first load in this version.
Needless to say, the available craftable bows now call for BOWYER skill in their crafting.

- added: craftable Longbow

You can craft a longbow from [M]ake menu under "Weapons" category.

- added: pausable weapon crafting

Crafting of the items in [M]ake -> "Weapons" category are now pausable tasks allowing you to have breaks and continue at will later on. These weapons are stone-axe, stone knife, club, javelin, spruce quick-bow, shortbow, longbow and bowstring.
To continue paused weapon crafting use the same crafting option again standing beside the said partially finished item. Like the other partially crafted items these will remain on the ground and can be picked up only after they are finished. They are rendered with a different tint and described as "partially crafted", "half-crafted", "largely crafted" etc. when looking at them.

- changed: crafting times and requirements of certain weapons

Now that the weapon crafting is pausable the production times of certain weapons have been increased to more reasonable levels. There are also minor changes in some material or tool requirements.
The changes are as follows, but bear in mind that these are the average set values and poor tools and/or skills may very well double the actual production times.

* Stone-axe

Stone-axe gets the greatest time increase in the production time as on average it now takes 50 hours to make one. That's a lot, but it really is a slow process to get the stone blade knapped and grinded out to shape that is efficient for felling trees.
Thus, stone-axe now becomes a survival option which you won't take up too lightly, but only in extreme need. Crafting a stone-axe now also needs another stone for final sharpening and polishing. Also, the previous requirement for rope has been replaced with strong cordage requirement. This means you can also use for example spruce withes for securing the head in place in the handle.

* Stone knife

It now takes 5 hours on average to make and also requires a stone for final sharpening.

* Javelin

It now takes 2 hour on average to make.

* Shortbow

It now takes 12 hours on average to make. The time increase is signficant compared to the earlier, and only a skilled bowyer with quality tools may manage to craft a shortbow in one day. With mediocre skills and tools it's a process of several work days.

* Longbow

It takes 18 hours on average to make. Thus, crafting a longbow is a process of several work days even for a skilled bowyer.

* Bowstring

It now takes 2 hours on average to make a bowstring from strands of yarn, and 30 minutes on average from a ready-made cord. When using a ready-made cord it often needs to be thinned down to suitable thickness so it's not just tying of the knots.

- added: BOWSTRING game encyclopedia (F1) entry

- updated: SHORTBOW and LONGBOW game encyclopedia (F1) entries

- added: pausable haft crafting

Crafting of the spear, axe and shovel hafts are now pausable tasks.

- added: pausable item trap crafting and loop snare batch production

Crafting of the paw-board fox trap and loop snare are now pausable tasks. There are also some changes as follows;

* Paw-board

Crafting time has been increased to three hours.

* Loop snare

Loop snares can be made in batches of up to ten at a time, and it takes 20 minutes on average to craft one.

- added: pausable lumber items crafting

Crafting of the wooden stakes, staves and wood slats are now pausable tasks. There are also some changes as follows;

* Wood slat

Crafting time for a batch of 20 slats has been increased to 200 minutes.

* Wooden stake

Wooden stakes are made in sets of 5 pieces from one slender tree trunk. Previously it was 8 pieces from one trunk.

* Staff

When crafting staves one slender tree trunk can yield 3 proper straight staves. Previously it was one trunk for one staff.

- added: pausable utility article crafting for some items in the category

Crafting of the wooden shovel, birch-bark box and birch-bark basket are now pausable tasks. There are also some changes as follows;

* Wooden shovel

It is now made from a board instead of a wooden block. The crafting time has been incresed to 8 hours.

- added: springs

Springs are water sources bringing groundwater to the surface. They can be found in the terrain on zoomed-in maps at varying environments in size of one to three map tiles.
Springs do remain unfrozen even in the winter which makes them very useful water sources. A spring found in the wilderness may provide a great spot for a homestead for those who like to live in the forest further away from the lakes or rivers.
From now on the village water supply ponds are also springs. As they don't freeze they are easier to maintain and spot even in the winter.
MIGRATION NOTICE: Water supply ponds in the villages you have visited in the previous version will automatically turn into springs in this version.

- added: "behind your back" reference to asking for NPC whereabouts

When asking the whereabouts of an NPC who is close by but not seen by the player character, the people will now point out that the target NPC is "...over there, just behind your back.".

- changed: pushing allowed to locations not visible to the player character

You can now

ush items around regardless of the location being visible or not. This helps to maintain character's daily life also in the pitch dark low visibility conditions.

- fixed: pausable crafts in process occasionally disappearing when finishing crafting something else beside them

- fixed: possibility to remove hafts from sickles

This was mistakenly allowed. Sickles are a special case and not yet included in the hafting mechanics.

- fixed: skin item duplication if tanning got cancelled at the requirements dialog

- fixed: villagers occasionally wandering impractically far from the village area

- fixed: low quality hafts not degrading the finished hafted weapon quality correctly

You pretty much always got fine hafted weapons even with the inferior hafts.

- fixed: "Of wolf and woman" quest related NPCs selection mess

There was a rare occurrence where the said quest dialogues didn't unfold properly due to the game engine picking the related NPCs incorrectly.

- fixed: paused craft remaining time checks

There was a rare condition where the remaining time to continue paused crafting was calculated incorrectly resulting in too fast completion of items at the end of the process.

- fixed: title song playback interruptions and cracks upon the game starting

The issue was with .ogg file loading. The troublesome audio is now loaded before the title song starts, and some .ogg audio has been replaced with .wav files.

- fixed: occasional white screen flash when player character goes to sleep

- fixed: attempt to haft an invalid target item made the item to disappear

- fixed: sickles weighted too much

Sickle item weight was mistakenly set to 3 lbs. This is fixed now, and sickles weigh 1 lbs as intended.

Cheers! ːurw_sageː

May 3, 2024

💥 Dev Blog 01 - A Peekz Unda da Hood'! 💥

Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks - [P] Shievo

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2078450

OI! YOOZ SPEED FREEKS!

We wish you all a Dakka-filled Spring and sincere thanks for your energy and involvement in the Speed Freeks community so far!

More Mobbin’ means More Dakka!!!

When we started creating Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks we set out to create a game that will quench every Ork fan's thirst for speed, mayhem, and of course, more dakka!

With your help, we aim to create the raucous racing that we’ve all been waiting for... a high-orktane combat racer, that's bursting with chaotic Orky energy!!

We believe that the best way to make Speed Freeks the most epic game it can be is by collaborating with our dedicated and knowledgeable player base, working together to improve and evolve the game.

To help with this partnership, we’ve set up community tools to collect, process, and take action on your feedback topics. The next step is getting you (back) into the game so we can revel in the vehicular mayhem as a mob and easily gather feedback.

Speaking of which, you can add, comment, and upvote our community topics here: https://speedfreeks40k.featureupvote.com/

Krump Meet the Devs!

Caged Element is a passionate game studio that specializes in intense combat racing titles. With their previous hit GRIP, they unleashed a flurry of speed and chaos upon the combat racing world, and with Speed Freeks they’re mashing an arcade racer with a third person shooter to create a thrilling death race that's ded Orky!

Caged Element also became known for involving the GRIP community in that game’s development process, and will continue this trend as much as they can again with all of you like-minded, adrenaline junky Speed Freeks!

Join us in Discord to stay up to date with Speed Freeks news and community events, as well as other opportunities to get involved with the game.

Post-Alpha Progress

The previously released Speed Freeks Alpha playtest on Steam was accessed by over 140,000 players which lead to over 100,000 wishlists. We can’t thank you enough for spreading the word, playing the game, and sharing your thoughts and ideas. As you can imagine we collected a lot of feedback from the community, which we have been working through since then.

Here’s a list of some of the things we’ve been working on, based on their importance, as well as community priorities. Keep in mind that this is not the full list and the topics on this list are subject to change until we finalize a community feedback and content roadmap.

Based on your Alpha feedback, we’ve been fixing, improving, and adding:

Technical

Input customization
Performance optimizations
Improved visuals and audio
Matchmaking and match quality improvements including better network sync and auto-balance between rounds
Improved gamepad support
Fixing bugs - thank you for all the reports! - this one is gonna take a while :D

Gameplay

Another game mode
New maps and vehicle
Vehicle and ability balance tweaks
Voiced quick chats, so you can WAAAGH! out loud, and use other Ork slang
Shokkjump Dragsta “Shokk Tunnel” ability
Kill assists
Improved sense of speed
Quality of life improvements in general
Daily Challenges
Vehicle Challenges
Vehicle Customization
Kill Camera
And much more

As mentioned, this is just a small taste of the additions and improvements we’ve made to the game based on your feedback, and we’re looking forward to continuing this collaboration with the next public release. If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, please drop them in the discussion threads or join us in Discord.

Until the next time, can we get a WAAAGH?!

On behalf of Caged Element and PLAION we thank you for your early interest in Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks and we welcome you to the Kult of Speed!

Join our community-focused game development discussions on your favorite platform:

Steam Discussions
Discord
r/SpeedFreeks
Suggest Features & Report Bugs
Support

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2078450