Hello everyone!

A quick rundown of new features and improvements in "Underground Garage" Alpha on Steam, build
5114:

1. Damage System:
- Car parts will be damaged when in contact with environment.

2. Garage Hub:
- We can now move cars between parking, delivery zone and garage. Can be used by pressing placeholder "GarageHub" near garage entry or by APP.

3. Driving Camera:
- We changed behaviour of camera during driving, mainly during turns and when on reversed.

4. Quests:
- Uber Quest is now live, preview can be accessed after second tutorial mission.

5. Cars:
- We added new car - Nexa 115 and two new engines - I6 and V6.

6. UI:
- Added APP to manage Garage Hub, Shop, Inventory and others. Can be accessed by pressing TAB.
- We changed Journal, Inventory and Shop, though look is still not final.
- Added notification system, right now game will notify player if: car cannot by driven (lack of major components) or new quest is available.

Fixes:
- We fixed cars not spawning in traffic.
- Few crashes in Mechanic Mode.
Optimalization:
- +30 fps on High/Epic settings on tested machines.

Known Issues:
- Occasional incorrect driving behavior when below 30 fps.
- Some car elements cannot be painted correctly.
- Inconsistencies in the UI.

Current Priorities:
- Expanding notification system - more information for player during gameplay.
- Adding more quest content - we are finishing few key features that will allow us to add more quest content.
- Fixing all car parts to be properly painted.
- Finishing the UI to the final state.

Alpha is currently open to our most active community members on Discord.

Cheers,
Underground Garage Team

• New Job
  • Dragon Knight
    

    
  • Tier 2 Job that can put any spell into Breath form: altered area-of-effect in the shape of a T
    
  • Works with almost every spell: Flames, Cure, Haste, Upon Death
    
  • Works with other special skills like Guard, Double-cast, Infuse (Melee only)
    
  • 
• New Features
  • Upon the second run-through of the story mode (after finishing the first), enemies have upgraded jobs. They'll have Tier 2 jobs instead of the Tier 1 jobs that appeared in the first run-through. This is to have the second run-through feel different and be sufficiently challenging.
    
  • Swap Job Button. If you have correct job upgrades you can more easily swap your Main Job and Sub Job.
    
  • New Cloaks of Dragons item that grants Breath: Flames ability and the upgraded version offers the Dragon Knight class.
    
  • Hold Down DPAD for faster cursor navigation. Works how you would expect: hold down an arrow key and then after a short time the cursor will quickly move in that direction.
    
  • Necromancer's Upon Death may now have AOE. There is a new upgrade to increase its AOE. Lancer's Charge now increases the AOE of Upon Death instead of the ability that it triggers.
    
  • Timeline appears when viewing the scene and considering whether to continue casting or not.
    
  • More random maps will appear in Bandit missions and Mercenary Training missions.
    
  • Expected HP absorption from magic or weapon will appear over the caster when selecting a target
    
  • You may now use Guard with Bombard, Direct Shot, and Sniper Shot
    
  • AI Improvements
    
    • When your party is much stronger than the enemy, the enemy is more likely to engage than delay
      
    • Dumb AI units (soldiers, bandits) now think they have more accuracy than they actually do, resulting in them attacking more often and being idle less.
      
    • AI no longer considers enemy Rage. Oftentimes enemies attack their own units that they expect to die, to remove any Rage that could be gained by their opponent. It appeared as though the AI was making a mistake.
      
    • Enemy is less likely to buff melee units that are not near an opponent.
• Fixes
  • Fixed crash that could occur with Champions and one of its upgrades
    
  • Fixed issue where items would disappear when trying to remove an item that grants a job
    
  • Change Job Bonus descriptions to be more consistent with the number appearing on right or left of text.
    
  • Controller orientation settings now correctly affect choosing direction with Wait
    
  • Buffed Berserk HP, Speed, and Concentration to be more inline with other Tier 2 jobs

Join the Discussion on Discord .

Hey detectives, we've got another experimental patch ready for you all with a bunch of fixes!

Fixed: Vandalism side jobs could choose apartments with no or not enough windows
Fixed: The correct passwords to black market dealers were not being accepted some of the time
Fixed: On some occasions innocent citizens were admitting to murders they didn’t commit (!)
Fixed: The game could not generate a city info txt file from compressed city data
Fixed: Errors in Dead of Night when killer’s home building did not feature a telephone router
Fixed: Disabled closing case for retirement
Fixed: Small chance of a pile of clothes blocking access to a low drawer*
Fixed: Head bob was broken in Dead of Night and certain other situations
Fixed: Sentry gun turrets did not unfold properly when alarm triggered if they weren’t visibly rendered.
Fixed: Rare error when loading in certain player apartments (no door appearing, rendering errors, audio errors)
Fixed: Some issues solves when buying/placing light switches in décor edit mode
Fixed: Restrictions put on cruncher use depending on position (for when positioned in inaccessible positions via decor edit mode; could otherwise result in clipping/teleporting of the player)
Fixed: Potential fix for sniper excessive shooting scenario
Fixed: Sitting in a chair after physics were recently active caused it to glitch out as it interacted with the player collider
Fixed: You can no longer sit on a chair unless it’s upright
Fixed: Player wasn’t able to sit in a chair if they had moved it away from its starting position
Better randomization of success/fail results with dialog

* Requires a new city generation to appear/spawn/see

the state of progress
We are working on an update to patch some of the bugs that were reported to us as soon as we can. We hope to have it out in a week or so.
We have been working on Bodacious Agents for nearly two and a half years. It has been such a large part of my life and it saddens me that the progress has been so slow. but as we are a small team of two, we have to maintain day jobs as well as making this game.

Price drop
After some feedback, we have come to the realization that the price is somewhat high. And have made the decision to drop it to better reflect the game we are able to bring you. This should be updated by the time you are seeing this post.

thank you for taking the time to read this,
Pirate Dave

v0.8 is progressing well: new ocean generation, basic modding support and new views (one with visible clouds) are done. Don't hesitate to activate the beta branch to test it! Still a few features to work on before releasing it to everyone.

So, in the meantime, I would like to rewrite here an old post from twitter (2019!) that was explaining the hexagonal generation I've developped for Plan B. Here it is:


How to create a sphere made of hexagons? Hexagons of similar size and orientation?

The most common way to do that is to start from a regular icosahedron (solid of 20 of equilateral triangles), then subdiving each triangle (sphere tessellation). Each triangle vertex becomes an hexagon, as you can see in this pic (credits https://twitter.com/AndyGainey ; I'll come back to him):



Here is a sphere with 5 subdivisions (~10,000 hexagons). It's very nice, that's what I initially planned to use... but it's actually bad for a game. Not because of the 12 hidden pentagons, but because of the non-uniformity of the size, shape and orientation of the hexagons.



Here is what you can see at different positions of the sphere ; north pole being on top. Hexagons are of various shape, size, and orientation ; the result would be awful when you scroll in the game, very disturbant.



There are other ways to do this sphere tessellation, like the very interesting Healpix, which garantees the same size for each area, but have non-uniform shape, and squares instead of triangles/hexagons. https://healpix.sourceforge.io http://montage.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/HEALPix/



A very special and incredibly imaginative solution is the one of
@AndyGainey, explained in detail here: http://experilous.com/1/blog/post/procedural-planet-generation
To avoid avoid pentagones and predictable irregularities, he decided to do the total opposite: going full irregularity.



When irregularity (in size, shape and number of edges) is everywhere and random, the surface actually becomes regular - homogeneous in its irregularity. Really brillant, but not what I need for my game, as I really want regular hexagons.



So, what I do is that I divide the sphere in vertical "slices". Inside each slice, the triangles/hexagons are set in perfectly horizontal rows, and are (almost) pefectly equilateral. The non-uniformity is grouped in the links between slice.



One big advantage is that the more hexagons there are, the more regular it becomes. And for my game, I'll have a lot, lot of hexagons. Here is the sphere with a few thousands ones.



And here is a portion of the surface, with a few millions of hexagons. Can you spot the irregular shapes ? Not easy ! They should definitely not be a problem when playing on this field.



The "Icosahedron tessellation" method produces only 12 pentagons. With my method I get much more: 720 for a sphere of 14000 hexagons (5%). But the more hexagons, the better the ratio is. For 10 millions of hexagons, only 0.2% are pentagons or heptagons.
I have calculated the variation in the triangles edge lengths (are hexagons are uniform in shape and size ?): I get a coefficient of variation of 6.5% for the icosahedron tessellation ; but only 1.6% with my method.
The best advantage of my solution is about the orientation of the hexagons (are they "horizontal" ? I check the angles of the triangles edges). I get a coefficient of variation of only 3.8%, compared to the 55% with the icosahedron tessellation!


Here it is. 5 years later, i have no regret using this system, i still can't think of a more suited one. Although, i can say now that i definitely underestimated the technical complexity of using this system in a full game, to properly manage the slices borders.

If I had had more time, i would have loved to research further in this matter. Maybe find a way to avoid the slices. Or something else.
If any of you know of some interesting research about it, i'd be very interested to know about it!

We're very excited to announce Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori, an epic open-world adventure game where players will explore breathtaking landscapes on horseback, featuring high-fidelity graphics and unparalleled realism in equine behavior and animation, developed on Unreal Engine 5.

Taking on the role as an ancient courier rider, players will complete difficult missions, cultivate their nomad camp, and train and care for majestic horses as they unravel the mystery of Khiimori, the mythical “wind horse” and the spirit of the earth and sky.

Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori will launch in Early Access on Steam in September 2024.



In Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori, players will embark on an epic adventure set in 13th century Mongolia, stepping into the role of a young courier rider. Horses will be essential to survival and safety as players breed horses, tame new ones and train them to aid them in their charting of the sprawling Mongolian landscape. As they immerse themselves into the game’s expansive open world full of wonders and intriguing tales, players will need to strategically plan their routes through different biomes of beautiful, yet harsh terrain, and master the challenges of the wilderness to complete their missions.

Building on the open world aspect the Windstorm games are known for, Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori advances gameplay mechanics that are unique to the game’s core experience. As players explore the world and complete missions, they will cultivate their nomad camp along the way, building yurts, managing important items and resources, and training and caring for their horses. Throughout their journey, players will take on quests that test their capabilities and require riding mastery and thoughtful planning in order to build their legacy as one of the greatest ancient courier riders in 13th century Mongolia.

Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori will launch in Early Access on Steam in September 2024, at a very early stage in its development, so the development team can iterate and develop gameplay based on community input. A roadmap of planned updates during the Early Access phase will be released in the coming months.

To keep up to date on the latest news surrounding Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori, wishlist the game!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2697000/Windstorm_The_Legend_of_Khiimori/

Build Number: #614009.0

Hello Gigantic fans,

First, we’d like to thank you all so much for your support and feedback since we launched Gigantic: Rampage Edition last month! With Rampage Edition, it’s been a passion project for all of us as we set out to bring back Gigantic for you all to jump in and have fun playing the game once again after so many years. We are incredibly grateful for the overwhelming support you all have given us, and it’s helped us pinpoint what you all love about Rampage Edition and what could be improved to make it the best experience possible.

Our team has made progress on improving Rampage Edition, such as improving server issues that players encountered at launch – but we’re continuing to work hard on fixing additional issues. Encountering bugs, glitches and crashes can be frustrating, and we take these issues very seriously.

We’ve released a hotfix patch today to address and fix several pressing issues, including crashes players have run into.

Coming up, we plan to release a major update that will fix known issues – such as the PS5 crashing issue we’re continuing to work on fixing, along with region matchmaking issues. Our top priority is improving Rampage Edition for all players, but once we feel it’s been improved across the board, we’ll be releasing a content update with Ranked Mode and classic hero skins for Margrave and Griselma. We can’t wait for you all to jump into Ranked Mode when it’s ready.

Thank you again for your support and understanding. We are determined to make Gigantic: Rampage Edition the best Gigantic experience possible for all players, and we will continue to refine and improve the game.

General
- Fixed various crashes across platforms
- Fixed crossplay button appearing as always disabled
- Fixed match history not displaying match results correctly
- Fixed issue with friends’ stats not displaying correctly
- Multiple fortune description updates
- Multiple description updates for hero skills, skill upgrades, builds, and lore
- Fixed multiple localization text issues
- Correction of Status Effect icons for Imani
- Bot Backfilling - Bots spawned after a player leaves are invincible and do not belong to either team

Heroes
- Wu: Typhoon's Fury - Skill functionality updated
-- Duration of the Armor and Damage buff is now correctly increased to 10 seconds if the enemy was hit with the skill.

- PS5 Crash
-- PS5 System is non-responsive when closing application after being stuck on the VS transition screen
- Region matchmaking
- Improving solo queue wait times
- Hero balancing
- "Creating Crew" bug on Arc
-- Temporary Workaround: Switch Arc client language to English
- Issues surrounding Custom games

Hey Truckers,

Your feedback has been invaluable in shaping Alaskan Road Truckers, and we can't thank you enough for your ongoing support. As Patch 1.4 settles in, we're eager to hear your broader sentiments and experiences with the latest update.



We've been working hard to address some of the key issues affecting gameplay, including AI behaviors, performance optimization, controller fixes, UI enhancements, and more. Your input is crucial in helping us prioritize these improvements.

If you haven't already, please take a moment to fill in our questionnaire. Your detailed responses will provide us with valuable insights into your experience with Patch 1.4 and help shape the future of Alaskan Road Truckers!

SURVEY LINK



While we're focused on addressing main issues on PC, we want to reassure our console players that development for Alaskan Road Truckers on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S is still underway. Stay tuned for more updates!

Lastly, if you've been enjoying your adventures in Alaska, we'd greatly appreciate it if you could take a moment to review the game on Steam. Your reviews help other players discover the game and support our continued development efforts.



Keep on trucking!

The Alaskan Road Truckers Development Team

Buy Alaskan Road Truckers on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/849100/Alaskan_Road_Truckers/

Grab the free Ice Roads Expansion:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2704590/Alaskan_Road_Truckers_Ice_Roads/

Get badass cosmetics with the Mother Truckers Edition:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2600800/Alaskan_Road_Truckers_Mother_Truckers_Edition/

Become a post-apocalyptic warrior with the Trucking Hell Edition:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2709680/Alaskan_Road_Truckers_Trucking_Hell/

Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/7nzKkAVgN4
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alaskanroadtruckers
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alaskantrucksim
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alaskanroadtruckers/
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alaskan.road.truckers
Check out the Alaskan Road Truckers wiki:
https://alaskanroadtruckers.wiki.gg/wiki/Alaskan_Road_Truckers_Wiki

Hi everybody!

Thanks for the feedback on the public beta. We are releasing the patch officially today, version 25.4.64. If you installed the latest public beta, there is no need to update.

Important info for online leagues: Note that this version is NOT compatible with previous versions. All online league members must be on the same version. To ensure updates are handled correctly, it’s recommended that the commissioner import all league exports while on the previous version, then update to the new version and publish the updated league file (that can be part of a regular sim). Then league members can update to the new version only after the commissioner has published the updated league file. Versions 25.4.63 and 25.4.64 are compatible with each other.

Changelists 25.4.64:

• Updated MLB roster set (need to start new game for changes to apply)
  
• Added option to specify sock models for teams (team uniform & color dialog)
  
• Fixed path to pants customization error
  
• Updated 3D movements
  
• Added Hall of Fame Showcase: Browse a collection of memorabilia from the Hall of Fame, including plaques and artifacts. New items will be added periodically, check back in!
  
• Added button to hide pre-game options display
  
• Added vs other team stats to pre-game display in some resolutions
  
• Added option to show development lab specific ratings changes in program completion emails
  
• Fixed some issues with live start ratings
  
• Fixed stat lines appearing for future seasons in some rare circumstances
  
• Fixed some text conditions
  
• Fixed 2023 minor leagues not showing up in historical games
  
• Fixed in-game news popup sizing
  
• Fixed teams running less than intended relievers
  
• Fixed teams not signing indy league players
  
• In historical games with recalc, fielding experience will stay for players when historical transactions are disabled; when historical transactions or historical lineups are enabled, fielding experience will reset on recalc
  
• Updated historical minor league fielding for OF
  
• Rule 5 players who change teams as minor leaguers will retain their 4/5 year exemptions
  
• Increased development speed for some players
  
• PT: Fixed regular watchlist cards showing in combinator watchlist
  
• PT: Fixed using the back button to go back to the combinator page showing wrong wrong eligible cards
  
• Misc bugfixes & tweaks

More details here: https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/showthread.php?t=355397

Thank you for your support!

by Eladrin

Hello everybody!

The 3.12.1 "Andromeda" release with The Machine Age has gone well, but we have some more bugfixes and stability improvements that didn't quite make it into the release version.

Since this is a holiday-shortened week in Sweden, we won't be releasing these to the live build until next Thursday. In the interim I've asked the team to put up a Steam Open Beta using the stellaris_test branch with the following changes:


Bugfixes

• Added additional checks to prevent fully virtual pops from being created on the lathe
  
• Fix for Hive Mind background unaligned
  
• Fixed Sectors released by Individualist Machines having the wrong ethics
  
• Fixed virtual pops sometimes being created while planets are being colonised
  
• Fixed weapon and strike craft range calculations in ship behavior.
  
• If an active relic gets removed the relic cooldown is now reset.
  
• The paradox titan will now appear correctly in the ship view
  
• Updated Resort Workers, Clerks and Cyberdome Spectators to have trade preference for auto-modding
  
• Uplifted species will now always have their required traits

Stability

• Civic tooltip CTD fix
  
• Fix CTD when resync has occured with a player in system view using certain graphical assets
  
• Fixed CTD after resync
  
• Fixed CTD in planetview timed modifier tooltip.

AI

• Fixes building type AI weight calculations

Modding

• Added range_components to ship behaviors, which specifies which components to use for range calculations.

There may be a few more fixes in next week's release, but we wanted you to get these stability fixes as quickly as possible.

Have a great weekend and thank you for playing Stellaris!