Hi everyone, in this patch we have added new features and did some fixes.
We are also working hard a fresh new UI/UX and new battlegrounds. Stay tuned for more details!

• New 3D battle UI
  
• Added new deck's backsides! More backs coming soon!
  
• Added new deck's backside window details (right-click on deck's backside)

• Fixed various translations

Sorry for the mishap. I accidently uploaded the demo build trying to update the recent hotfix..... btw there's a demo coming soon as Steam approves it lol.

Fixes

• exception: Possible fix for a very very rare bug related to unity
  
• recipe: Fixed Recipe 2 for FuelCell
  
• ui: Ending pan on an element with a tooltip not stick the tooltip.

Added

• transport: Added possibility to create connections to Garbage Disposals, to automate throwaway if wanted

Improved

• calc: Only calculate the distance of Tasks if its really needed
  
• login: Easier Login for Beta Testers
  
• pathfinding: Precalculate some needed paths after clearing the caches async and paralell
  
• performance: Prevent calculationg not needed paths for disabled automatic transports
  
• performance: Do less Path Check. Only when its realy needed.
  
• performance: Improved finding of Services for Persons, to gain performance
  
• pimenu: Only show enabled Empty and Fill Tasks for storages
  
• pimenu: Make Problem more readable (adjusted color)
  
• timewarp: Improved Timewarp of Crafting to estimate better when its waiting for a worker
  
• transport: Increased slightly the players tasks to be picked before the automatic ones are picked.
  
• ui: Only show relevant InteriorItems in Interior Item Build menu
  
• unity: Updated Unity

My biggest task this month was to create a painting for the game itself. Astride will have some wall decor where it’s suitable, so some things that resemble a painting are perfect for our concept and will also make the inside of a certain building a bit more interesting.

The idea was more of a historical painting from around the early 1900s, featuring two people riding together on each their horse in a calm landscape near a little pond. I had to do some research to find some fitting clothes for the two that were also normal in the given time area.

I’ll show you a blurred image of it. It’s not too exciting to show it before it’s in the game. I also have a few more “paintings” in the works. I am excited to see them in the game.




The month of May has been short for me due to national holidays and a personal week off. Nonetheless, we still have a new breed to reveal that was chosen by one of our amazing Kickstarter backers. This is the mighty Jutland horse!

While the Jutland does have great, big feathers (hair) on their legs, this is a bigger task that we haven't started just yet. So, for now, all of the horses that are supposed to have leg feathers will have bare legs. I can't wait until we figure out a good solution for the hair and how the colors will be affected. Since we have so many color variations and markings, this will definitely be a nut to crack, but I am sure we will get there at some point.





Say goodbye to that old, crusty placeholder of a world, and say hello to this new world!
I’m unsure where to actually begin, so I’ll start with the fact that even though I did most of it, I got thorough guidance from Josef, the 3D artist who is creating our characters. He also designed the soft and cozy lighting!



We got rid of all the older environment assets and replaced them with different asset packs from Nature Manufacture. Working with these assets, and with Josef, has been nothing less than a game changer. It’s good to say that I finally feel more confident in this field.




Our goal is for you as a player to recognize where you are, which was difficult in the current environment scene on Steam. We don’t know for sure when this scene will be available to you, but we hope it will be part of a larger update in the next couple of months. In this post, I won’t be too technical, just sharing some pictures and thoughts.

Eldheim is based on Scandinavian countries, and what is Scandinavia without our mighty mountains? For us, these surroundings bring a calm and safe feeling, like nature is shielding you from the stressful daily life and wants to bring you peace and quiet.




Behind the horse market stable, you will find a nice little field, where some horses or maybe other animals will roam.




Nearby the horse market, you’ll find a house that has a fantastic view, which I hope most of us can agree is like a dream.



From another angle, you can see the fjord. Imagine having that as a background while training showjumping with Rini!



Or would you rather go for a little trail alone or among old and new friends?



I really hope that you are looking forward to saying goodbye to the old environment and welcoming this new place. It has been a joy to work on, and I’m looking forward to continuing with this. Some changes, however, might happen, but all in all, this is the general path we are on.

On a last note, we just got rid of that dreadful water! This is one of the next steps I’ll learn.




In the devlog for April, I kept a little secret. While my main work was on tack setup and system last month, I also began looking into finally adding reins. It took some time to research and learn new tools, but over May it began to take shape into proper reins. During this time I tried to make a good backlog of GIFs and pictures of my progress and bloopers to use in a Patreon post on the making of reins and why they were delayed. While they are not finished yet, they are at a level where I feel we can test them publicly.



While a lot of time has gone to making and documenting the reins it does not mean I've been idle on other things. I’ve teased it in the Patreon post, but there is a new animation on its way! It is a rearing animation, for both horse and rider! Though, when it will be available is uncertain, as we need to fix a bug that makes animations while stationary play incorrectly and set up some other requirements before it will be in-game. This is the same bug that prevents the turning on the forehand and pirouette animations from playing correctly.

Other than that, I adjusted the tack script from last month to work on set pieces instead of individual parts like having to add the metal and leather parts of the saddle as separate objects, when they are meant to be one object.



Though I do have to split it up so that you can choose the saddle pad independently from the saddle.


Early May was all about playtesting, getting a patch out to fix some performance issues, adding quality of life improvements and getting a prototype show jumping scoreboard in. I worked with the livestream community to record some promotional footage and I was surprised over how many people joined. I will most likely do another one of these in June.

In mid to late May I worked on improving the internal tools to speed up development. One of the improvements is that it now takes about two seconds to enter the game in Unity and that we can now automatically launch a server from launch parameters enabling people to host 24/7 servers.


I started the month by making a system to change the horse’s tack from the player’s inventory. It uses the code Marius worked on last month to assign tack to the horse. Once the player has some tack in their inventory, all they need to do is to double-click it to equip it to the horse. If the horse already has a tack of the same type equipped (like a saddle), then the old tack will be returned to the player’s inventory. A horse’s equipped tack is saved between sessions, so the player won’t have to put it on every time they start the game. There currently isn’t an option to remove the tack, but it is possible to hide the saddle and boots. Tack change from the inventory can be seen in action below, complete with placeholder images and text.



Another feature I have worked on is course selection. Players currently have to interact with a board to start a dressage course or show jumping course. There is one board for each course. This is going to become inconvenient when we add more courses, so I have made some changes so that one board can have several courses. Interacting with a board will bring up a UI where the player can see all the courses the board has, and select the one they want.



Since show jumping courses need jumps that should be visible to all players, they work a bit differently than dressage courses. A show jumping course must be activated before it can be used. One board can only have one course active at a time, and the active course can only be changed if no one is using it. Dressage courses have no restrictions like this.

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Please be aware that the content featured in these devlogs represents an ongoing work in progress and may be subject to further changes. We are committed to continuously developing and refining our game. To stay informed about the latest updates and connect with the rest of the Astride community, we invite you to join our dedicated Discord server community here! For additional information about Astride, please visit our official website.

Mechanical Lab is a 2D action game focused on the physical interaction of machines with the environment. Explore, build and experiment to survive in the city of robots long after the end of human civilization.

New features:
- the player character's name and difficulty level now appears in the pause menu, allowing speedrun comparisons
- the timer pauses after beating a final boss and the boss's name is displayed in the pause menu

Modifications:
- taking an hit in Extreme difficulty will now remove a whole red heart (literally making the Condamned and the Summoner much harder to play)
- more enemies will show in hard and extreme difficulty
- the difficulty of endless mode now increases more rapidly
- when Playing the Condamned, you won't see any shield room anymore
- endless mode now provides less souls
- small performance optimizations

Bugfixes:
- the Gravitation item has been reworked to better works with some weapons

The great Children's Day challenge is already in the game!

Get into the game faster to get ahead of your rivals and get new cards in your deck!

Adventures are waiting for you at every turn!

You probably saw the "Add to your wishlist" message several times here on Steam. But what are all the developers asking it for, should you click that green (or blue) button, what is it?

You can add the game to the wishlist right here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1201700/Warnament/

Or you can do it on the game's page just under the video trailer, like this:


If you have a game on your wishlist you will:

• Receive an email on the release day
  
• See news about the game published by its' developer here on Steam
  
• Get notified about the discounts by email

You can always remove the game from your wishlist.

The developer will know nothing about players who added the game to the wishlist. No email, no account name, no ability to send you a message - nothing. The only thing visible for the developers is the total number of wishlists
This number is a thing that can help the developers understand how much players are interested in the game, and how many additional features and level of quality they should consider to work on.

• 1,000 wishlists - almost nobody knows about the game, probably players don't want it or never heard about the game
  
• 1,000,000 wishlists - players absolutely crazy about that and expecting something really really good from the developers

If you are interested - consider adding the game to your wishlist right now, it's like hitting the subscribe button on social media.
If you are not sure yet (or you waiting for the discounts) and want to see how the game is being developed to decide later - adding to the wishlist is the best option to tell Steam algorithms that you want to be aware of news and updates from the developer.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1201700/Warnament/

P.S. If you want to talk to developers directly, suggest some features, and get more involved in the making of the game - Discord and Steam Discussions are great for that. Or let's chat down below if you have anything to discuss!

Calling all Operators,

As previously teased and discussed during our first community stream, and paving the way for the highly anticipated update 1.50 that will be released in September, we have a freshly out of the press update for you: introducing Black One Blood Brothers 1.49C.



Now, you'll be able to custom your operator's height. Your enemies' height will be randomized at spawn as well.



Are you ready to face new extreme challenges? Get ready for a mode that will push you to go big or go home. Failing critical objectives or losing all of your operators will lead you to lose the entire campaign, and you'll have to start over again.

You'll be able to completely customize your campaign. And bare with us, you'll soon learn more about the different options you have to create your own campaign.




We heard you! To make the battle map and quick orders easier to use, Helios has made an entire rework of these elements: more accessible, more intuitive, it has never been that simple to use them. For the quick orders panel, the camera is now the cursor to set up the waypoints/points of interest you would like to set, to minimize the impact of the strategic quick orders on your gameplay.



We really hope that you will enjoy these intermediate patch notes and rendez-vous early September for a ground breaking update. As usual, you are more than welcome to give us feedback on Discord and social media!

See the complete patch notes here:

• Addition: Operator height
  
• Addition: Hardcore mode in campaign game mode
  
• Addition: Customized difficulty in campaign game mode
  
• Overhaul: Battle mode design
  
• Overhaul: Quick Orders design

• Addition: Map Template - Abandoned Mines
  
• Addition: New camo on firearm - Tac Desert
  
• Addition: New camo on firearm - Brazilian Forest
  
• Addition: New camo on firearm - Snow
  
• Addition: New camo on firearm - Tac Forest
  
• Addition: New camo on firearm - Desert Marpat
  
• Addition: New award - Finish 'Serpent's Whisper: Part 1' HARDCORE (6 difficulties)
  
• Addition: New award - Finish 'Serpent's Whisper: Part 2' HARDCORE (6 difficulties)
  
• Addition: New award - Finish 'Serpent's Whisper: Complete' HARDCORE (6 difficulties)
  
• Addition: New award - Finish 'Cover operations' HARDCORE (very short) (6 difficulties)
  
• Addition: New award - Finish 'Cover operations' HARDCORE (short) (6 difficulties)
  
• Addition: New award - Finish 'Cover operations' HARDCORE (medium) (6 difficulties)
  
• Addition: New award - Finish 'Cover operations' HARDCORE (long) (6 difficulties)
  
• Addition: New award - Finish 'Cover operations' HARDCORE (very long) (6 difficulties)
  
• GAMEPLAY
  
• Addition: New gameplay option - Mouse sensitivity when aiming
  
• Addition: New gameplay option - Recoil strength
  
• Addition: Tutorial on using ballistic shields
  
• Addition: Enemies have a chance of being left-handed
  
• Addition: The enemies all have different heights
  
• Addition: New control mode in quick orders
  
• Addition: Shortcut to change the object to throw or place in "Quick Orders" mode
  
• Addition: Items in the inventory are categorized as "tools" and "stored items"
  
• Addition: Magazines are automatically added and removed from the inventory based on the weapons used by the operator
  
• Addition: Attachments are automatically removed from the inventory based on the weapons used by the operator
  
• Addition: Auto-save in map editor
  
• Improvement: Enemy spawns are disabled around an objective that has just been completed (whether successfully or unsuccessfully)
  
• Improvement: "Ambient Music" option has been moved to the "Extras" menu.
  
• Improvement: Many texts from the various tutorials
  
• Improvement: 3D position of characters considered as objectives (hostage, enemy leader...)
  
• Fix: The weapon position on a female operator was too high in first-person view
  
• Fix: Frame rate drops when selecting the game mode in the mission menu
  
• Fix: Player's current speed was not always correct after using the battle plan mode
  
• Fix: Many errors in operator positioning when interacting with doors in "Mall of Eden"
  
• Fix: Location of some bridges in "Jin-Shu Temple" map
  
• Fix: A map played in "Dynamic Campaign" mode could load an undesired weather
  
• AI
  
• Improvement: Operators enter primarily from the sides during a "Breach and Clear" action
  
• Fix: An operator could fail to follow their squad leader after a team change
  

• Fix: Decal errors on some helmets

• Overhaul: HUD design
  
• Overhaul: New input icons
  
• Addition: Special input icons for AZERTY keyboard
  
• Improvement: Many titles and texts in English
  
• Improvement: Many titles and texts in French
  
• Improvement: Briefing design
  
• Improvement: Position of the windows for operator customization
  
• Improvement: "Screen Space Fog Scattering" is enabled by default
  
• Fix: List of grenades was not updating correctly when changing operators in the "battle plan" mode
  
• Fix: Interface display error when returning from weapon customization
  
• Fix: Some icons in the inventory may not have been displayed in the correct ratio
  
• Fix: Some french texts

Greetings Amornians! We are currently actively developing quests and filling our world with a variety of characters. In the next update, you will be able to interact with the inhabitants of our world, help the farmers cope with their daily hardships, and watch the story unfold.