With the Sally Demo now available, we wanted to share information on the game's Steam Deck compatibility.

Currently, we have optimized the game to run at a stable, locked, 30 frames per second on the Steam Deck. It is configured at a slightly lower graphics quality than when running on Windows to ensure a smooth experience. It uses a Linux-native build, ensuring optimal compatibility.

If the Demo doesn't launch for you, you can try forcing it to use Proton. We have tested version 9.0-1 and some of our players have reported that version 8.0-5 works for them. Note that it might take longer at first launch due to installing Windows and Unreal Engine prerequisites.

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If you encounter any issues when running the Demo on the Steam Deck, please make sure to file a bug report, as it will help us provide a better experience.

In celebration of our Steam Next Fest participation, we’re thrilled to stream Teeny Tiny Town demo right on our store page!

Merge tiles to build your dream city, one tiny step at a time. It's like magic, but with strategy. 🌟 Chill out with lo-fi beats and enjoy the charming low-poly art. Night mode? We've got that too for all the dark mode lovers. No rush here—just relax and build at your own pace. 🏙️✨

We'll also be answering all your questions about the game.

Stream starts: 06/12/2024 at 4:00 PM BST / 5:00 PM CET / 8:00 AM PT

See you there!

Grandma and that guy with the wizard hat were up all night decorating Edgefield to celebrate pride month 2024. (Yeah, they are a little late, we know, but it was definitely worth the wait!)

Make sure to play during June to see the colorfully decorated Edgefield and get the color changing spell available in the medieval level for free which allows you to change bucket skins to all kind of colorful designs and pride flags.

Be proud! You definitely have every reason to be! ːp2cubeː

• Added pride flags to every lamp pole in Edgefield
  
• Painted some road crossings in the colors of the rainbow. These are here to stay
  
• Added 100% Discount for the color changing spell available in the medieval level

• Fixed a bug where for some players the portal cutscene wouldn't play in the right speed
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to drive through the closed barrier and enter the base in level 1 when they already have exited the barrier
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed the player to drive backwards in the base in level 1 and fall of the map
  
• Fixed a camera glitch that would occur for some players
  
• Fixed connection issues with DualSense controllers
  
• Fixed a pathfinding bug on SteamDeck that resulted in pedestrians glitching through random geometry

Improved controlling tower, with skybox, recoil and impact effect
Other bug fixes

We're thrilled to announce that The Iron Rig DLC will arrive to DREDGE on August 15th! In case you missed the Future Game Show Summer Showcase, watch our Release Date Announcement Trailer below: 👇


On August 15th, you'll be introduced to a new constructible town to your DREDGE adventure: The Iron Rig. Uncover ancient disturbances and craft advanced equipment, items and gadgets with the help of new acquaintances. Assist Ironhaven Corp's constructions but remember, progress always comes at a price.

• 2-5 hours of content playable at any time in your playthrough
  
• Uncover a brand new side-story
  
• Craft a new tier of equipment with 8 new pieces of gear
  
• Catch more than 50 new fish
  
• Advance to a new tier of boat hull, bigger and better than before
  
• Research enhanced versions of some abilities
  
• Earn 12 new achievements

Join Ironhaven Corp's efforts to assemble The Iron Rig, but be wary. What are they truly here for? 👀


https://store.steampowered.com/app/2561450/DREDGE__The_Iron_Rig/

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After four years of dedication and hard work from our small team here in Wrocław, Poland, we're excited to reveal the Nobody Wants to Die narrative-driven gameplay for the first time, as well as confirm when you will get to experience our vision of the future.

Step beyond your human shell into the world of New York, 2329 with this first glimpse at Nobody Wants to Die’s gameplay.

Click to watch the trailer:

Become immersed in this interactive story as you dive deep into crime scenes with your investigation tools.

Analyse blood splatter patterns using your UV lamp, use your hand-held x-ray to peek beneath the surface, and hone your time manipulation techniques – to uncover the evidence and reveal the truth.

Lose yourself in Nobody Wants to Die’s sci-fi world on July 17th, 2024, on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1939970

See you all in New York, 2329, very soon.

- Critical Hit Games

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We are tuning some bosses levels based on feedback, that will not affect their loot value, only experience.
We enjoy players gathering and putting their differences aside to conquer the challenges and bosses we have to offer. With that said, we're increasing the loot value of all major bosses.
The idea is, we want people to keep pushing for the rare items but without going completely bankrupt.
We'll keep monitoring loot value and listening to feedback!

• Ceggadys had her loot value increased by x5.
  
• Aegyskerin had its loot value increased by x4.
  
• Skaldar had his loot value increased by x3.
  
• Thordrak had his loot value increased by x4 & Level 55 => 60, HP Increased and Defenses decreased.
  
• Bar-gura gold drop increased.
  
• Mountain Giant gold drop increased & Level 60 => 57, Defenses reduced.
  
• Witch Freia level 52 => 51.
  
• Witch Rosice level 54 => 52.
  
• Volent Brod level 55 => 51.
  
• Nysandra level 55 => 52.
  
• Sirl Imparo level 60 => 53.
  
• Mogrash level 50 => 52.

• Fixed DPI related screenshot issue with DirectX.
  
• Also hiding boss HUD when taking screenshots without HUD.
  
• Fix for a targeting issue causing crash when walking off screen.
  
• Disable scrambled input for console channel when being drunk.
  
• Hiding item weights when the capacity indicator is disabled.

• Added entry in Eastebb with experience.
  
• Fixed typos.

• Mogrash blade & axe defense debuff removed.

We've fixed an issue with online lobbies that caused the game to crash as soon as the match starts.

We'll be on the lookout for any other issues, be sure to let us know if you find anything and we'll fix it as soon as possible!

We have an exciting new update for the Seven Cities playtest available now! Building on our recent weapon reworks, this update includes three major improvements:
- Shotgun specialization overhaul
- Revamped HUD
- Enhanced VFX

Stay tuned, as we'll be publishing a roadmap soon detailing what will be available at the start of the Early Access in October.

Your feedback is invaluable, and we still need your help to grow our community. Spread the word and invite more players to join us!

Here’s what’s new in today's update:




- Added/updated a total of 30 specialization nodes, including costs of 2, 4, and 8 points.
- New specializations include explosive bullets, homing bullets, increased bullet shot quantity, and elemental damage.

- Added a node with exploding bullets.
- Clean some nodes descriptions

- Fixed alterations for the melee category. Now, you can stun with an axe and cause bleeding with a baseball bat.
- Ensured that bonus alteration chance and duration stats are working properly.



- Began implementing a new HUD design for better readability and alignment with our art direction. More improvements to come, including the minimap and quest display.

- Polished the checkbox for auto-looting secondary weapons.

- Added VFX feedback for most alterations and digital elementals, including bleed, data corruption, and screen freeze.
- New bullet trail VFX, with different trails for enemies.



- Added sound FX feedback for most alterations and digital elementals.
- Added sound effects for passive and specialization panels when hovering and clicking.
- New sound for the taxi's arrival.
- Updated sounds for the handgun and AK47; more weapons will get sound design updates soon.

- Increased floor detail on each map.

- Items now drop on the floor if you don't have enough space and you should receive an item from any source.
- Added Shift + Left Click to drop items.

- Status effects are now displayed under Roberto’s lifebar on top of the HUD.



- Fixed issues where the roll sometimes stayed in place instead of moving in the mouse direction.
- Fixed rolls that sometimes kept the character in place.
- Increased the quantity of bullets in magazines for each weapon category through passives, items, and specializations.
- Cleared and fixed many specializations across all categories.
- You can no longer apply the same alteration on the same enemy repeatedly, resolving display and real duration issues of status alterations.

- A major check for wide screen support was completed, fixing 90% of the issues.

- Reduced movement speed for melee enemies.
- Reduced bullet speed, especially for enemies.
- The start popup will now always appear.
- Added more tooltips, with more to come!
- Temporarily disabled public chat in-game to avoid numerous issues.
- Added a wishlist button everywhere – wishlisting is key! Help us spread the word about Seven Cities.


**Additional Information:**
- We’re currently displaying item category icons in the HUD to show the remaining bullets in your magazine. Proper icons will be created this week.

Thank you for reading this patch note. We hope you enjoy this update and the amount of work put into it. This is what we've accomplished in the last two weeks, and our team isn't even full-time on the game right now. Just imagine what we can achieve together for the Early Access in October!

We need you more than ever to create the funniest build customizations for your character and share them with us on social media and Discord.

In our last devlog, we mentioned focusing on visuals and UI, and while this remains true, we also dove into a deep efficiency rabbit hole. How fast can we make the game? This became an obsession, but more on that later.

In our last devlog, we mentioned developing the auction system. While the system is still in it's early stages, the visuals for the auction houses came from the artist, and they look stunning. We wanted different tiers of auctions, so as the player progresses, they can access more expensive auction houses. The visuals represent this progression, and the final result is pretty cool.


Example of the different auction houses.

We also worked on the financials page, mainly line charts. The charts are custom-built since ready-made solutions didn’t work. We plan to add bar graphs for more informative visuals and to make data "glanceable" in the game. The charts still have bugs, like negative numbers performing oddly (lines going out of bounds).

Currently, the financial page is simple and a bit barren. For now, it serves its purpose of giving the player a picture of the stable's current financials. We plan to improve this page later but believe our time is better spent elsewhere for now.


The financial overview.


You can make a deep-dive into the income and costs.


The assets and liabilities, the option to take loans are now in the game.

We went deep into optimizing efficiency. Previously, a year took 30-40 minutes to simulate, meaning a day took 5-6 seconds. By moving many functions to pure SQL, we drastically improved this to 1 second a day, or 6 minutes a year. We handle bulk transactions rather than individual ones, reducing thousands of transactions to just a few.

This required rewriting some custom logic, and while the code isn’t as universal, it’s much faster. For instance, paying all employees monthly in a large stable now takes 1-2 transactions instead of thousands. However, our first round of optimizations broke many functions, so it took a long time to fix these issues. It's also very tedious to code stuff like this, since you don't really see any "new" progress.


You can see where some of the optimizations were made.

Our goal for a day simulation is under 500ms, but we’ll revisit this once the game is finished.

Here are the current execution times for daily functions:

• Daily training: 359 ms, 36.56% of total
  
• Daily race register: 154 ms, 15.68% of total
  
• Monthly salary payments: 102 ms, 10.39% of total
  
• Monthly breeding: 94 ms, 9.57% of total
  
• Horse value calculation: 90 ms, 9.16% of total
  
• Need to liquidate horses check: 82 ms, 8.35% of total
  
• Hiring daily process: 35 ms, 3.56% of total
  
• Role-based stars daily update: 22 ms, 2.24% of total
  
• Get stable economic factors: 22 ms, 2.24% of total
  
• World economics: 9 ms, 0.92% of total
  
• Births daily: 5 ms, 0.51% of total
  
• Horse death daily: 5 ms, 0.51% of total
  
• Monthly loan payments: 2 ms, 0.20% of total
  
• Racing daily: 1 ms, 0.10% of total

We also improved the data tracking in the game, developing 121 different metrics tracked daily. These include metrics from the average cash of the stables to the total prime racing age horses. This foundation will make balancing the game easier in the future. We can now generate a 300-page PDF on the game world’s performance in under a minute. This will be improved further during actual game balancing.


Example of a graph that tracks the number of foals and yearlings in game.

We received mail from a fan about the game’s complexity, suggesting we focus on creating a working product before adding complexity. We agree. We’ve discussed many features still in the pipeline: countries, trotting, steeplechase, breeds, jockey mode, and more.

Last devlog, we spoke about the grant application and the game design document. A game design document is a detailed document describing the game in detail, that helps to scope the game to avoid scope creep. It's a living document, but the "frame" should not change. We also submitted the grant application, we will get the information if we got the grant or not on July 1st. Let's keep our thumbs up!

It made clear that we are making a horse racing managerial game first and foremost. It should be made clear, we want to make this the most realistic horse racing simulator in the world. But we have to be realistic, we don't have the resources to make that in the first iteration of the game. As a comparison, Sports Interactive Inc. (the developers of Football Manager, a huge inspiration), currently employs around 300 people. In contrast, Sheep Meadow Road Games currently employs one (1) part-time employee, me.

So it's clear that we can't reach that level, yet.

We have been discussing with a Swedish game development school about a possible intern, but nothing has been decided yet. While the intern would work for free, one of the company ethos is to pay everyone fairly for their contribution. Since the company bank account is close to zero, we will probably pay them with a revenue share programme, if they do a good job. But as said, nothing has been decided yet.

Speaking of the level of detail, one of the top wishes from the fans is realistic scheduling and racecourses. But as they also point out, we can't just put whatever we want in the game since we would then have licensing issues. Just for fun, we tried contacting 10 world-renown racecourses. None of them has yet answered our emails, and there is a slim chance that they will, but let's follow up on this in the next devlog.

If anyone has contacts with a racecourse or brand interested in being featured, please reach out to help@sheepmeadowroad.games.

With summer vacation approaching, devlogs might be less frequent as we take some time to relax. We’re also considering video devlogs, despite lacking experience in making YouTube videos. It’s a learning curve, but it might be more relaxing to consume than text. Let us know if this is something that you would be interested in.

StayAtHomeDev featured our game in one of his videos, I would recommend you to check him out, he has fantastic content!

Our next update will likely continue to focus on the interfaces for buying and selling horses and the auction system. The next new key feature will likely be the news system, after that a overhaul of the race simulation system. Once these two systems are in game, the game should be ready to be playtested. We will inform you more about this in the future.

We are continuously working to enhance Horse Racing Manager, and your feedback is invaluable. Don't forget to add Horse Racing Manager to your Steam wishlist! Your support is crucial for us and greatly appreciated.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2740170/Horse_Racing_Manager/