Please note that while in its Alpha stage, we cannot guarantee Park Studio will work reliably on all hardware, please report any bugs or crashes on our Discord server. Bug reports will be fixed as soon as possible.
Park Studio Alpha 0.1 has been released, here is what it includes:
- The Coaster Editor : A tool that allows you to build awesome roller coasters with many customization options. In this release, the editor comes with 3 highly detailed coaster models, as well as basic coaster track editing.
- The Park Building Tools : The base of the game, the building tools allow you to place and edit architecture and scenery pieces in your park. This release includes over 3000+ architecture and scenery pieces to play with. (Most pieces are placeholders, they are using bought assets from the Unreal Engine Marketplace and will be replaced in a future release with higher quality models). Note: The Undo and Redo systems are WIP, some actions are not yet supported, be careful when building.
- The Path Editor : A tool that allows you to build paths allowing your visitors (coming soon) to go around your park and enjoy your creations. This release comes with a a few path textures and customization options.
- Terrain Editing : A set of tools that allow you to sculpt the terrain of your park to your liking. This release comes with over a few terrain textures to adjust the look and feel of your landscapes.
Coming soon in Park Studio Alpha 0.2
Here are the features planned for release Alpha 0.2, coming soon.
- Water body generation : A set of tools that will allow you to create lakes and flowing rivers.
- New Coaster Types : Two new coaster types will join the 3 already included.
- Transfer Tracks & Special Elements : An addition to the Coaster Editor, allowing you to build more complex rides with quick switch tracks, turn tables and more.
- Better Sounds & Music : Due to the small budget we had for the first release of the game we couldn't get our hands on the sounds and music we wanted, the sounds of the game will progressively be upgraded update after update (Note: Some objects or rides may have no sound in Alpha 0.1).
There is still a lot of features planned for releases after the Alpha, you can find a brief summary of those features on our website here.
Important Note: Park Studio Alpha 0.1 is a "proof of concept" release that is only meant to showcase the base idea for the game, the goal of this release is to fund the project and allow it progress and evolve, you can participate in the funding of the game by inviting your friends to purchase and play Park Studio. Due to the game being in a very early stage of development, we highly encourage you not to play the game too seriously, we would advise not to start mega projects as the game can drastically change in future releases. Instead, we advise you to enjoy the features currently available and give us feedback!
1 Add lightsaber 2 Add lightning rod 3 Add ore refiner 4 Adjust the size of the weapon 5 Adjust movement speed 6 Add display of felling and digging 7 Adjust attack animation 8 Fixed the bug of incorrect location of mining special effects
I've been working on getting it ready for the past 3 weeks, the main 2 changes are controller support, and infestation, the full list of changes is below.
Controller Support: All gamepads should work to play the game, but I haven't tested all the types.
Infestation: There are 7 levels of Infestation which are unlocked by beating a map & come with difficulty modifiers.
🐛 Changes this patch: - Added Infestation, 7 levels of difficulty which also have visual changes to maps. - Added Gamepad support. - Redid the Controls menu to include Controller controls - Changed credits menu - Added a menu song. - Fixed the ability to adjust the Achievement progress bar with the mouse. - Fixed Map Ambiance not using the Ambient audio setting. - Did Multiple random small optimizations - Added a selector showing what button is currently selected for controller or keyboard menu navigation. - Added a scroll when selecting different maps. - Added a scroll when navigating through settings. - Fixed Controller detection. - Fixed the ability to change the level-up progress. - Fixed the ability to start a dodge while the game is paused. - Fixed the ability to dodge roll while standing still. - Replaced bosses of The Warehouse and The River with new ones. - Changed the bugs that spawn on the River map. - Fixed map selector sometimes moving to the left. - Added health bars under the bosses. - Fixed Gun damage being applied wrong. - Fixed some text not being colored as intended. - Lowered hit slow time. - Fixed some damages being broken. - Heavy Optimizations to Damage Dealing/Text Pops ranging from 50%-96% performance increase. - Optimized Gun shooting by 50% - Optimized Overall Enemies by 81% - Optimized Swarms by 66%
👷♂️📜 Future Update Ideas/Plans. - Elites & more Complex Enemies.
As I said when announcing the release date, v1.0 is not the end of the game so long as there are gamers playing. It took longer than it should've to get to this point, but Entomophobia was my first solo-developed game(I published other games while making this one but yeah), so there was a lot of learning that was done while making it. I appreciate the people who played during Early Access and gave feedback, thank you! :D
I'll make some small patches within the next couple of days, if you have bugs or issues, let me know through the Entomophobia discussions tab in the Community Hub, or on the Discord server linked in the About this section.
Please Consider Wishlisting if you don't already own the Game.
The Ravager Soundtrack is now available for purchase on Steam, if you would like to support our musicians!
Our development focus remains on Act V Chapter Two, and it will continue that way until Chapter Two is ready to share with you.
But we'll keep up our regular updates with everything else that finishes while it's cooking!
MVPs of this build are Exo Spectra, for his fantastic new tracks; Mokkel, for cutting all of our new VA; and Stuke, for single-handedly (pun unintended) doing all our playtesting for this build.
Act V Features
Scene: Showing the wolf tribe how a real alpha and beta do it (collab with Briar Bloodthorn and DoItToJulia).
Voice: Darja’s responses to your advances in the palace (Nyah).
Voice: Enid’s introduction and reintroduction in the creche (Demi Goggles).
Voice: Issa’s conversation about the princess (Maya Fae).
Voice: Marie-Anne’s response to your advances while pregnant in the dungeon (Marina Montague).
Voice: Marie-Anne’s thankful oral scene in the dungeon (Marina Montague).
Voice: Mother’s various appearances at court (Midnight Iris, Demi Goggles, and GreyScale).
Act I-IV Features
Scene: An alternate path for Naho’s ‘Return’ consort scene (three variants).
Art: Remastered art for Naho’s ‘sunny side up’ scene (two variants, eight images, Lubbio).
Art: Remastered art for Naho’s Reprimand scene (six images, Lubbio).
Art: Remastered art for Naho’s Leashed scene (six images, Lubbio).
1. Full HD Mode at Start: For first-time players, the game now starts in 1920 x 1080 fullscreen mode, providing an immersive experience right from the beginning.
2. Looped Menu Music: - We’ve enhanced the audio by looping the menu music. Enjoy a continuous soundtrack as you navigate through the game’s menus.
3. Improved Jump Animation: - We’ve revamped the jump animation for a more fluid and dynamic experience.
4. New Menu Background: - Prepare to be captivated by our fresh menu background! It sets the tone for your gaming adventure and adds an extra layer of visual delight.
Previous Updates:
1. Full screen Mode: - For first-time players, the game now starts in fullscreen mode instead of windowed fullscreen.
2. Track Enhancements: - The starting point of the track has been adjusted for improved flow.
3. Logo Update: Start Screen Refreshed: - Start screen has a new letter type.
4. Reset to Starting Point Fix: - We've resolved an issue where players couldn't reset to the starting point.
5. In-Game Instructions: - Added the text prompt with the message: "Press 'P' to pause and see the controls." when the level begins.
6. Disabled Water Effects and Boost on Land: - Disabled water effects and boosts on land.
7. Improved Timing Sound for Jumping Flowers: - The timing sound when jumping over flowers has been adjusted for better synchronization.
Matt has been engaged with a special Fallen Earth project funded by a 3rd party investor. Unfortunately, the project was way behind in its deliverables due to technical implementation issues, and has spent the last 4 months course correcting the project.
Soon, Matt aims to lower his development involvement on this project so he can get back to working on other games such as APB and Unsung Story.
Fallen Earth Update:
The back-end rewrite is close to being done.
The servers are running on an Operating system that is no longer supported and has problems that make the servers slow down over time.
There is a core issue which is requiring the servers to be manually restarted which needs to be addressed.
Decline in the Gaming Industry:
The gaming industry is experiencing a decline. As such, many companies are being forced to reduce staff and Little Orbit is in the same situation.
Little Orbit has shifted resources to move a previous APB Engineer back on APB. Currently, there are 3 dedicated resources with 3 other support staff.
APB
Easy Anti-Cheat:
The game has had various Anti-cheats solutions in the past, Epic’s Easy Anti-Cheat has previously worked the best.
LIttleOrbit worked with Epic as a beta partner to help them improve Easy Anti-Cheat which unfortunately led to multiple issues including false-positive bans.
The Easy Anti-Cheat ban-appeal user experience was bad due to the lack of communication between Easy Anti-Cheat and the Players, leading players to think the system was broken.
There will be an unban-wave to address the false-positive bans. (More details on what the unban-wave is going to look like sooner to when it happens)
We’re looking into other solutions to move away from Easy Anti-Cheat but are still investigating our options.
Mirage:
Matt did a majority of the work on Mirage. He is aware of the issues, which are not difficult to fix, and will return to the project once he is able.
Matchmaking:
Matt considers Matchmaking as one of the biggest issues APB faces and therefore puts it at the highest possible priority.
Matt is proud of the system when it works but there are issues in its current state. When the system works, the overall match quality is better than the previous system, however, it needs improvements.
Running matches on the World Server rather than on each individual District server was needed for future improvements such as Cross-district matchmaking. However, this has introduced instability to the World server which isn’t ideal.
Since the release of Matchmaking the development efforts were shifted to move the code from running on the World server to its own, exclusive Matchmaking server. This effort is close to being done and the goal is to test it on OTW in the coming weeks.
There are edge cases in the algorithm when players fail to match.
After the initial stability issues of Phase 1 of the new Matchmaking system were worked out, we collected a lot of good feedback regarding backup and we are addressing these issues. We know the Backup UI is confusing and has some bugs.
Matt does not want to get rid of the Faction system for Mission districts, there are better solutions to fixing Matchmaking issues related to lower population.
Matchmaking has always struggled to match high MMR players, especially now that asymmetrical missions are no longer a thing, we are looking into ways of solving this.
Server Merge:
The merge was tested internally and it had a lot of issues.
There is not going to be a server merge, instead, we pivoted to the Cross-district matchmaking solution which will enable players from different worlds to play in any district regardless of region.
Conflicting names between servers are an issue and we plan on having a Discord-like solution that will let players with duplicate names from different servers be easily identified.
We still plan on releasing inactive names, however, doing so now would cause issues in the future so we are waiting on the right time to release all of the inactive names.
Content:
The new contacts are still being itemized, Matt was not happy with the previous plans for them.
Some content may be added to previous contacts retroactively.
The Joker Store is an ongoing project and we are committed to adding more things to the Joker Store when we can.
Internally, we’ve had great discussions regarding balance, focusing on buffs to very underutilized weapons that nobody plays.
Players get frustrated when the game is facing issues such as Matchmaking not working and our focus is on Balance passes so we are looking for the right time to do them.
New guns are a cool idea but we would like to make many of the existing guns more compelling first.
First-Time User Experience:
The tutorial tells you how the basic mechanics work, but does not tell you how APB works which is a massive issue. It is a high priority to look at and fix but not as high on the list as Matchmaking.
Getting PvE into APB is a mess but it would be amazing to have as a way to teach new players.
We are considering a mode for newer players that lets them shoot any weapon in the game in a shooting range while also providing them with more information such as damage numbers while they are within that district.
Consoles:
Microsoft and Sony do not allow games to be transferred from one publisher to another which has led Little Orbit and Plaion to mutually agree to shut down the console versions.
Once the console versions are fully shut down in September, we have full control over the console versions.
Console ports of the PC versions are likely what is going to be submitted to Microsoft and Sony when we are ready to publish the game on consoles again.
Resubmitting the current console versions is not going to work.
Controller support is being looked at.
Previously Little Orbit had to submit builds to Koch Media which ended up never submitting those builds to Microsoft/Sony due to QA reasons.
VOIP:
Reloaded had a contract with Vivox that expired some time ago which prompted Vivox to shut down the servers.
VOIP is important for a game like APB and made Console APB special.
We want to bring back VOIP, however, doing so requires a new version of Vivox to be implemented which is time-consuming.
APB Priorities: Marketing:
Marketing is still on our Radar, however, there are key points that need to be addressed first such as Matchmaking, Anti-Cheat, and new Content such as the new Contacts.
Misc:
APB can’t be upgraded to Unreal 4/5 though PBR (Physically based rendering) may be possible in the future as well as improvements to APB’s post-processing effects such as some of the original shaders.
Adding more developers to a project doesn’t mean it’ll speed up development, especially when working on complex things such as Matchmaking.
Griefing is still on our list of things to look at and fix.
Translations are heavily outdated - We are considering running our English translations through systems to generate European and Russian translations for players to use - The Russian translation is still supported but outdated.
The Trade-lock system should be better at telling players what they were Trade-locked for.
Most players that are permanently Trade-locked did something and are Trade-locked for a reason such as credit card fraud.
Improvements to the Inventory need to happen.
There’s a lot of documentation on how to make Waterfront a better district.
The Clan system needs an overhaul.
There should be a colorblind mode, however, messing with APB’s colors could introduce new issues.
A way to officially support arranged matches between players is something we would like to support in the future.
The bug that causes characters to slide at high FPS is still on our radar to fix.
Unsung Story
Matt hasn’t given up on the game.
Unsung has a huge upgrade to what is offered internally, about 80% of what was shared publicly is implemented.
Unsung remains a priority on our roadmap.
Customer Support:
LittleOrbit moved away from Zendesk on April 25, 2024 to Zoho which provides more features & flexibility for our current needs.
APB Reloaded customer support has to work with 14-year-old tools which can lead to easier tasks taking more time than usual to resolve.
Recently response times have gone up, we are sorry about this. However, we are committed to solving player issues.
