This month I focused on finishing the grapple mechanic since it will be used as a basis for other upcoming dinosaurs with their own specific variations. Outside of regular bugs, the Hordetest allowed a more “natural” environment to begin balance testing for grapple. Right now it is getting to a very stable state that we can start expanding upon. The same can be said about Mutations; its main functionalities are in with bug fixes and balance values already tested. The only core mechanics still not available at this time are related to Elders, which is planned to be worked on next.

Spectator mode has received some much needed attention to help administrative users. “Physics Foliage Interaction” is finalized both in core functionality and performance wise. Players can enable the two forms in the in game settings. The system now can be expanded to have more foliage types applied to the system and more should be done in the near future as we investigate foliage destruction.

See you next devblog everyone!


Hey! I’ve been working on a few different things over the last month like bug fixing various issues from Hordetesting and QA reports. I also worked on some server performance issues and setting up some backend tools for our profiling pipeline, which should allow us to keep a closer eye on how things are progressing performance wise.

I finished up the additions to RCON and did some more work on an upcoming engine update. The majority of my month was taken up working on the new AI systems that I briefly went over in the last dev blog, which should make finding AI a lot easier along with some behavior and spawning improvements.


Many of you have probably already seen most of my work this month on the hordetest branch. I was focusing on improving the diabloceratops's sparring mechanic, particularly the interactions when two players are locked together or pushing each other. It can be tricky to get things like this working in multiplayer, but I feel like I got it working rather well now.

We had some changes to the ceratosaurus's chuffing mechanic on our internal branch, but we decided to bring them to hordetesting. The ceratosaurus will now receive the defensive buff regardless of whether it vocalizes or not, it will also not vocalize automatically at group members or when it's below subadult growth.

Another change I made was enabling certain diabloceratops and tenontosaurus attacks to knock down fruit from trees and also open coconuts on the ground. Other than these I've been focusing on bug fixes, like I usually do during the horde test phase. I hope you have been enjoying the latest addition to the roster. On a personal note, it wasn’t my favorite at first but I’ve grown quite fond of this animal over our time together.


This month my attention has been entirely focused on lots of small incremental changes to push the update to the finish line in terms of audio, with a focus on both Diablo finalization and last additions to Stego’s new power swing. These include but are not limited to:

• Juvenile versions of Stego’s power swing vocals
  
• Added new sounds for Stego preparing its power swing while raising its tail
  
• New horns sound for Diablo when re-engaging into locked stance.
  
• Improvements to arrangement of Diablo sparring vocals when locked
  
• Balance to diablo sparring sounds volume – horns vs vocals
  
• New juvenile Diablo danger call sounds
  
• Improvements to generic Diablo juvenile sounds such as sparring and resting
  
• New adult and juvenile Diablo threaten call sounds
  
• Sounds added to Omni grapple and Diablo Grappled animations
  
• Improved diablo impale sounds – separated pre whoosh and impact sounds to improve timing and play the whoosh sound even if the attack does not hit a target
  
• Minor adjustments to how far horn sounds travel and behavior of sounds at distance
  
• Changed weather sounds to be filtered when indoors instead of silenced
  
• Updated Diablo beg and consume sounds to match new animations

With all this out the way I’ve now returned to working on vocal sounds for the Tyrannosaurus, refining its calls, primary and alt attack sounds and working on new sounds for its pain vocalizations. As long as no other necessary changes come up for Diablo then Tyrannosaurus sounds will be my primary focus for the foreseeable future.


Lately I’ve been working on a mix of things. My more recent task list has been made up of helping bring to life some meta characters and supplementing some surveillance equipment you may have seen alongside some vehicles you most definitely have not. It’s been an interesting project working out what I’ll call ‘vehicular anatomy’ and trying to come up with designs that are familiar enough to look believable while also giving it a unique flare so that it would feel like it came out of the game’s setting. What I like to do is chimera together parts from different vehicles for ideas and play with the basic shapes and then tie all those components together with similar stylings to our architectural designs: such as angular, brutalist, themes and the addition of the bars and rails gave them a nice militant, guarded look for the world they need to function in. You’ll see some of it in Phase Three this week!


It’s been a light month for me as I’ve been out of office, but I’ve been making up for the time working on the Diabloceratops and a bit of Tyrannosaurus so we can get to working on it in-game. Diablo is pretty much done animation-wise, but with how complex it’s sparring mechanic is there is always something to improve on to really sell that bit of gameplay.


Just imagine he’s locked horns with another Diablo.


This month like so many others has been a bit of a blur for me since there’s so much going on. There’s more polish done on mutations, grapple, sparring and diabloceratops that should get into your hands soonish. There will still be tweaks and alterations to the mechanics as time goes on as they need to be fairly flexible so other animals can interact with them in meaningful ways. But overall they’ve been satisfactory barring bugs of course.

The animation department has really been cooking this month. We’ve got some QOL animation smoothing tech being worked on in the background that should help remove some of the jank present in some transitions between animations. That process will be ongoing as there will be audits to all of the animations in the game as a whole for each species so we can pull the overall quality of the game up. We’ve been knocking animations out for the tyrannosaurus, triceratops, maiasaura, pteranodon as well as the now revealed allosaurus. They are all coming along nicely, some being animation complete or nearly complete. The tyrannosaurus has been getting some of its sparring related animations at last as well as polish to its special abilities. The triceratops will be following suit once we do some diabloceratops vs tyrannosaurus testing. For technical reasons, the maiasaura is awaiting the release of diabloceratops before its features are implemented but it is pretty much animation complete barring any issue, so the maiasaura should move fairly swiftly.

The pteranodon’s backburner mechanics have been brought back into the light along with some new features that should bring some meaningful changes to it as a playable that we were not able to deliver upon its initial release. The Isle is animation intense due to the amount of life we strive to breathe into the animals. So creatures that occupy multiple habitats (terrestrial, aquatic/amphibious, arboreal, aerial and subterranean) increase animation complexity by a large margin. Which led to creatures like the pteranodon, deinosuchus and dryosaurus releasing without some of the core features we had planned for them. Not lost, not forgotten.

For the creature on everyone's lips, we know the allosaurus was a super popular playable in legacy and we want to make sure its introduction into EVRIMA keeps with that trend. While we’ve only just revealed it publicly, the allosaurus has been worked on in small parts for a long time. Prototyping varying styles of grapples, claw swipes and more. It's important for us to try to incorporate its claws, which are an evolutionary step up, into its playstyle in a way that feels and looks appropriate for the animal as opposed to something too generic. The allosaurus is likely going to maintain its jack of all trades status by being both an ambush predator as well as a large game hunter. Exploding from cover at speed for a short distance to overwhelm smaller prey before being gassed. But foregoing stealth tactics for a more upfront approach when dealing with larger targets. Whittling them down over longer engagements. All of this is subject to change of course since even our best laid plans don’t always work out. More will be revealed as its features start to take shape and solidify. Here are a few of those prototypes.

The save file could get corrupted on some computers and that should now be fixed, anyone who experience their progress not being saved should now be able to play the game and progress as normal. If you are still experiencing this please tell us about it.

[UPDATE] Maintenance has been completed. Players who have been affect upon our morning maintenance has been reset. Cash shop items have been extended by 6 hours. Please restart your Nexon Launcher or Steam and thank you for your patience and understanding while we worked to address the issues!


Hi Maplers, 

We are aware of an ongoing issue involving missing currencies following our latest update, to resolve the issues for affected players, we'll be performing an unscheduled emergency maintenance. The game servers will be inaccessible until further notice. We will make sure this is resolved as quickly as possible and will provide updates when we can.

Thank you for your patience and we apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused. We will be performing an unscheduled maintenance today, June 28, 2024 at 12:35 PM PDT (3:35 PM EDT/ 9:30 PM CEST/ 5:35 AM AEST June 29). 

Thank you for your cooperation,

The MapleStory Team

-Metro is brighter (Lights are more likely to spawn)
-Equipment is cheaper (Up to 75%)
-Travel cost is cheaper (Up to 60%)
-Loot value has been increased (2x)
-Can toggle train door to keep enemies out of the train
-Added a cosmetic poster

-Fixed the dreaded stair killer bug
-Fixed bug where players drop over dead after respawning on the train
-Fixed couch collider on Hotel
-When loading a save game, the saved max player size should be loaded now
-Lobby privacy is now saved (planning to add an option in the future to let you change the privacy of a saved game)
-Fixed audio from changing on it's own

Hello, Merchants!

To be clear, we mean Early Access is coming to an end, not the game. ːsteamhappyː

We are closing in on what we will consider the v1.0 launch of Merchant’s Guide, and we wanted to share a few details about what you can expect from this version of the game.

This is a very exciting time for us. While the Early Access period of Merchant’s Guide is coming to an end, we truly consider it the beginning of a very long life for the game, as we have so much more we want to add to this world that we love so much. So, let’s kick off with what v1.0 is expected to feature!

User Interface

There’s no doubt we’ve been talking about our UI update for a long time now. We have been working on many assets behind the scenes, but we ended up having to continuously push the UI work further and further back. Thankfully, though, the wait is almost over! Now that patch v0.9 has been released, we are officially working on the implementation of the new UI!

However, we do want to be clear about what that means and set some expectations regarding when you might see it.

We are not only updating the visuals to be much sharper and easier to comprehend, but we are also hyper-focusing on how everything functions as a full game as opposed to individually. In the past, as we kept adding more features to the game, we made many things function as standalone features when they could have easily been merged with other existing features. A simple example of this would be the Docks, where you can salvage gear, craft more materials, and squish fish into fish oil. When the UI/UX update is complete, you will be able to salvage directly from your Merchant inventory, and the Crystalline Converter will be merged with the crafting stations to make it easier to see exactly what you have ready to craft. Similarly, the fish squishing and fish oil crafting will now be incorporated into the fishing interface. This eliminates the Docks entirely and consolidates its features into places where they already exist and make more sense.

Another larger example of the consolidation of the UI would be the changes to inventory management. We have consolidated the Merchant Inventory, Merchant Caches, Officers Inventory and the Storefront to all work on the same, single sheet. This means that just about any inventory management you will want to do will no longer require jumping back and forth between inventories, and instead, everything will be doable from the same single location with built in filters for much easier navigation and item control.

Finally, we have also rearranged how the interface works with how things pop up on the screen. No longer will different UI fixtures overlap each other as they do now. Instead, everything has its own dedicated screen space section and will remain exclusively inside its own area. This includes things like Officer Commands, which will no longer pop out of the officer portraits but will instead function directly inside the appropriate officer panel.

There are many more great changes coming, and everything will not only look different but also function differently. Veteran players will certainly have a small adjustment period learning where everything is and how everything works, but we expect the clarity will lead to vastly improved gameplay, a much easier learning experience for newer players, and indeed, significantly improved game performance as well!

Along with the UI update, we will also be including an updated Logbook. Admittedly, as we continued to make changes to the game, the Logbook has not kept up. We plan to update the Logbook to be a much more pleasant and useful experience. We encourage even veteran players to play through the Logbook on their first time coming back after the UI update to acquaint themselves with the new and improved ways the game plays.

With all that said, we plan on releasing these changes onto beta as they are ready, and the UI update will be our next major patch, version 0.9.1. Considering that we are adjusting every single visual UI asset in the game and touching on the functionality of every single system to some degree, this will be a relatively long quiet time for us. Please know that we are hard at work behind the scenes making Merchant’s Guide the best it can be, and at any time you can drop us a line in our Discord!

Just for a little teaser, here are some early images of the inventory screen and a few item hovers for the new UI rework! We hope you like what you see!

Here you can see a sample of the Inventory in game:


Here is what it may look like when hovering over a Common tier item:


Hovering over a Superior tier item:


Hovering over a Unique tier item:

Guild Rework

Shortly after the UI/UX patch, we will be releasing another patch with a guild rework. We still have some finer details to work out behind the scenes, but what we can tell you so far is that guilds will no longer be a random in-world event that any world hero can do. Instead, each town (Eastmire, Zar, Khor, and Neri) will have its own guild representing the town, with you and your guild being the representatives of Terafell. This means that the four other guilds in the area will be working with their own objectives and agendas alongside yours.

As you unlock new zones, you will also meet new guilds. They will be generated with random names and emblems within each playthrough and will come to the realm with their own members already geared and ready to fight. This is both good and bad for you as the Terafell guild, as this means you will have quicker access to higher-level world heroes in the form of these other guilds, but also more powerful competition in terms of who will be the strongest guild in the realm!

For example, once you clear Redclaw’s Lair and unlock the next zone, you will meet the Eastmire guild for your realm, which will automatically introduce three new world heroes into the realm who will already match your officers in power and preparedness. This means you won’t have to wait long for the non-guilded world heroes to catch up before you can venture into Tawny Mine with a group. Furthermore, the Zar guild will be ready to venture with you into Hallow’s Fall and beyond with five powerful guild members to join your officers.

That’s a small idea of what is coming in the first iteration of the guilds rework, but we have a lot more we want to add to the Guilds system to make it far more exciting to engage in.

Star Power Update

Star Power has been around since day one of Merchant’s Guide, and now we are going to bring a little more excitement to the Star Power system before v1.0 hits.

The numbers are all subject to change once we get the final balance in, but we wanted to cover the idea behind it anyway. Once we get this update in, you will still want to acquire star coins to empower your officers or other guild members up to five stars, and with each rank, every hero will receive a 3% stat bonus, meaning a 5-star hero will have a baseline 15% increase to their stats. However, each class will also have a set of special boosts they will receive at ranks 1, 3, and 5. For example, Elemental Mages may receive an extra boost to Mana at rank 1, Cast Speed at rank 3, and Ability Power at rank 5.

Of course, along with the power upgrades, the UI and visuals of star power will be more clear and appealing.

We think these changes will help each class specialization have more of a unique identity around their particular strengths, making investing those star coins into the specializations you desire much more impactful.

End Game Feature

We also have plans for those who want to engage beyond the campaign storyline in the form of Elite Dungeons. We have mentioned this feature before, but we have landed in a place that we absolutely love.

Elite Dungeons will be an optional bit of content that you will be able to engage in throughout your regular campaign playthrough. However, they will be a step above the regular dungeons in terms of difficulty, meaning that even after you’ve beaten the regular campaign playthrough, there will be much more you will need to obtain and work on to beat the elite versions of these later dungeons.

However, there is another twist to Elite Dungeons, and it is the reason we are keeping them optional.

When fighting in these Elite Dungeons, you will have full manual control over the heroes in the fight! Yes, we are slightly stepping away from the auto battler aspect of Merchant’s Guide to experiment with a completely brand new way to play.

When sending heroes to Elite Dungeons, you will be able to choose up to five heroes from your guild, including Members or Officers, to face the dungeon. You will then be charged with having to know and understand each ability of all five heroes and properly execute them in a strategic way to complete these elite encounters. Note that their basic attacks will still go off without you controlling them as they do in the non-elite dungeons.

We are aware that Merchant’s Guide has a certain amount of appeal to a lot of you in being an auto battler, so rest assured, if you don’t want to partake in these Elite Dungeons, you are not required to, and you can still enjoy the full campaign in all the difficulties up through the final zone, which will be talked about in the next section, without feeling like you are missing out on anything. However, for those who want to push their heroes a step further in a much more challenging way, Elite Dungeons will be for you!

New End Game Zone & Campaign Updates

While on the topic of the end game, coming with v1.0 we will also be releasing the final zone in Chapter 1, the Shimmering Isles. This zone will bring in new dungeons, new friends, new enemies, new visuals to enjoy, and will wrap up the storyline for Chapter 1. This will add a whole new layer to the final challenges of our first chapter.

Speaking of Chapter 1, we will also be including an entirely new way to play the Campaign. It’s been relatively on the sidelines since we put it in the game, and that was very intentional. The campaign itself will not function as a simple adventure like it does now within the game. Instead, it will be an active part of your playthrough with more involved storytelling and in-game cutscenes to keep you informed of what’s actually going on in the world! No more hero dialog to read. It’s a little crazier than we’ve let on so far, and we think the new challenges coming in the Shimmering Isles will bring an exciting end for those who have been waiting to see exactly what is going on in the world.

Release Date When?!

To wrap up this State of the Game, we wanted to talk about the timeline expectations going forward and into version 1.0. We would love to give the release date now, but we simply are not sure!

The good news is, it’s close. As stated about the UI/UX patch, it will be some time before we can get that patch into your hands. I wouldn’t dare give a specific timeline quite yet on that, but it could be anywhere in the range of 1-3 months to complete. We will be sure to communicate in our Discord if we hit any major problems or delays. However, the UI/UX patch is the final major patch delay that we will have before our v1.0 launch. When we launch the UI patch, version 0.9.1, we will include a showcase video of the UI changes, and we very much hope to have an official release date ready for you then. At the very least, a much more accurate estimation!

We cannot express how much we appreciate all of you who have come along for the ride with Merchant’s Guide, and we truly believe that the final version of the game will be a unique and fun experience.

See you again soon!

-Devs

VR Walk System (beta)

As the player walks in a circle the avatar walks in a straight line:

This feature allows users to create walking and running animations that cover a very large distance but are a contentious recorded animation and gives the impression that the motion capture was recorded in a large studio,

This feature was designed for a playspace of at least 10' x 10' , any less and you will notice the rotation since the users is spinning around the small radius and will make you dizzy really quick, but with larger playspace then yeah you could explore the world with a contentious full body tracked mocap animation and would barely notice any counter rotation, for warehouse-sized playspace (30' x 30') this feature would really rock!

Includes the newer generation fully animated UI with a custom shader viewport system:

For hallways make sure to enable the Lock Path and Look Turn options so you can set the path angle by pressing trigger, then the avatar will walk along the designated path:

This feature works best in maps of corridors and hallways where the parallax is very low, try to avoid large open maps to avoid motion sickness.

・Adjusted so that true clear cannot be obtained after returning.
・Fixed some wall omissions

Gameplay changes:

• An arcade mode where you can play through the game with unlimited ammo
  
• When you are in range to deal damage with a sword, the reticle will light up
  
• New achievement for beating Standard Mode without firing any bullets

Other changes / bug fixes:

• Key binds should now save correctly
  
• Some chat quality of life updates like not fading if you're currently typing a message
  
• Capped the number of baby spiders that spawn from goblin kings (was an issue in high rounds of endless)
  
• New link to discord on main menu - should help with organizing coop play
  
• A few typos in bestiary entries
  
• Added some tips to loading screens

This update addresses a lot of issues and tweaks the game for steamdeck compatibility.

Changelog

• Add auto settings for steamdeck gameplay
  
• Add gamepad control to cyhcle ranged fire mode with LB
  
• Add controller button prompts to order menu
  
• Automatically set native resolution when opening the game on the steamdeck
  
• Add controller button prompts to the tutorials
  
• Increase some text sizes when playing on small screen
  
• Fix AI Cavalry formation behavior around archers
  
• Fix AI Cavalry seeing your ranged units too easily during night
  
• Fix black bar visible on deployment screen when using controller
  
• Fix controller focus on deployment screen when defending
  
• Fix controller input during deployment
  
• Fix controller icon prompt to start the siege
  
• Fix controller input list on pause menu
  
• Fix stack overflow introduced in last patch during siege battles
  
• Fix file time and date sorting of campaign savefiles
  
• Fix battle size text in option menu
  
• Fix player losing game when faction leader is missing, will place back faction leader in random settlement
  
• Fix missing orders on gamepad controls
  
• Fix controller focus on campaign battle won screen
  
• Fix controller focus on prisoner screen
  
• Fix being able to start siege without any siege engines when using controller
  
• Fix dead units not completing their death animation on lower graphics settings and freezing in place
  
• Fix cursor visible when using controller and virtual cursor not active

Hi, everyone!
Thank you very much for following and Wishlisting Sunset Hills! The Sunset Hills Kickstarter campaign is now LIVE!!! After over 5 years of hard work, we are excited to share this journey with you. Visit our Kickstarter page to support us and help us to spread the words, we REALLY NEED YOUR SUPPORT to bring this hand-drawn narrative puzzle adventure to life.

In addition, we have released a new trailer featuring our latest Original Soundtrack (OST). Check it out to get a glimpse of the captivating world of Sunset Hills and the heartwarming story that awaits you.

💚🔗 [Sunset Hills Kickstarter Page]

🐾🎥 [Watch the New Trailer with OST]

Thank you for your continued support. We can’t wait to embark on this adventure together!

Best regards,

The Cotton Game Team