• Leaders introduced
  
• Shop UI implemented
  
• Damage stats panel added

• Can now click on a unit to see their stats at any time
  
• Damage stats panel added
  
• Relics with stacks now show in tooltips
  
• Positive buffs are now blue and negative buffs are now red (with a couple exceptions)
  
• Shop UI added (bench area is still a work in progress)
  
• Various Relic visual effects added
  
• Various Relic models added
  
• Various Relic sound effects added
  
• Various Relic icons added
  
• Various Relic death and cast animations added
  
• Various Relic tooltips updated

• Many animations added

View all Leaders: https://relicarena.com/leaders

Note: Most of the Leader art is temporary

View all Relics: https://relicarena.com/relics

• New Relic: Bazooka
  
• New Relic: Kevlar Vest
  
• New Relic: Mammoth Fossil

• All Relics now scale properly with 8 points
  
• Aztec Sun Stone: Juicy replaced with Ring of Fire: hits all enemies
  
• Boomerang: Cast range increased to 2000 for the base spell
  
• Boomerang: Super 1 - Serrated Boomerang: -3 stacking armor debuff
  
• Boomerang: Super 2 - Jumbo Boomerang: -300% speed, +300% size, stuns for 1.5s
  
• Boomerang: Super 3 - Fiery Boomerang: Boomerang deals 50 magic DPS for 5s to units hit
  
• Kris Blade: fixed to work with Tommy Gun
  
• Hammurabi’s Code: Juicy fixed to no longer give allies damage return if they’ve selected the Super that provides an aura
  
• Mask of Agamemnon: Fixed to be undispellable
  
• Oil Lamp: Genie no longer has a leash for the base spell
  
• Oil Lamp: Genie base damage from 50/100/150/200/250 to 30/60/90/120/150
  
• Oil Lamp: Genie Phantom Fist damage from 10/20/30/40/50 to 30/60/90/120/150
  
• Oil Lamp: Genie Super 1 no longer reduces Genie stats
  
• Plague Doctor Mask: Debuff duration from 10 to 30s
  

『あのゲー』＆『あのゲー2』に関するユーザーアンケートを8月25日（日）まで実施中！

ご購入いただいた方はもちろん、購入者以外の方からも幅広くアンケートを募集しておりますのでご協力をお願いいたします。
皆様からのご意見を、今後のゲームタイトル制作の参考にさせていただきます。

回答はコチラから（PC・スマートフォンより回答可能）↓
https://questant.jp/q/FHKKIC1R





どこかで見た、やってみたいと思ったことのあるミニゲームを5種類、全250ステージ収録！
新たに収録されたミニゲームを、たっぷり、ゆっくり、思う存分遊び尽くそう！

『どこかで見た“あのゲー”ムたちを棒人間で作ってみたけれど、果たしてあなたはクリアできるのか？2』は、Steamストアにて好評配信中です。

『あのゲー』＆『あのゲー2』に関するユーザーアンケートを8月25日（日）まで実施中！

ご購入いただいた方はもちろん、購入者以外の方からも幅広くアンケートを募集しておりますのでご協力をお願いいたします。
皆様からのご意見を、今後のゲームタイトル制作の参考にさせていただきます。

回答はコチラから（PC・スマートフォンより回答可能）↓
https://questant.jp/q/FHKKIC1R




このゲームは、みんながやってみたい！と思ったことがあるゲームを、コミカルでかわいい棒人間のキャラクターで制作し、たっぷり！ゆっくり！思う存分！遊ぶことができるミニゲーム集です。

収録ゲーム数は全5種類、合計250ステージ！
価格は棒人間にちなんだ「1,111円（税込）」！

『どこかで見た“あのゲー”ムたちを棒人間で作ってみたけれど、果たしてあなたはクリアできるのか？』は、Steamストアにて好評配信中です。

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2744230/

Long overdue, but some music (not all) is finally in.

I had to throw out of a few tracks while going through iterations of the music, trying to find a sound befitting of the atmosphere. While I like the music put in, I think there is still a lot of potential. I am not a musician, so I'm learning a lot in a short span of time.

Now, it is time to move onto narrative, as it is hard to envision the rest of the music without knowing how it will fit narratively. As you could probably guess, the current story is a place holder. And it sucks.
The intro and events will have accompanying art similar to the death screen, however that will probably be reworked. Plants will have dialogue and endings will eventually be added.

A lot of works needs to be done, and I'm not sure when it will fit together for another update. Hopefully not longer than a month.

New update, new story

Dear Neospace friends

It's that time again we have reached another milestone the version 1.5.0 is now available for you, with this update we want to bring even more details, effects and much more into the game.

The next update will be developed now, where we will throw out the hacking game “Jumpandrun” completely and make a worthy hacker game, we are very excited about your feedback.

The 1.6.0 Update Hacker Game will also be the last major patch for Neospace Prologue. Of course we will continue to fix bugs and other things.

After that we will focus on our Kickstarter and Chapter 1 and you can check out the full version of Neospace Wishlists.

Changelog

• New setting “Bloom” with which you can now greatly reduce the lights
  
• New effects have been added to the main menu
  
• New effects have been added to the Prolouge
  
• Voices have been edited with effects
  
• Asteroid Shooting Achiement has been rewritten because it was often misunderstood that the achivment is NOT done in Spaceship Racer, but in another mini game that can be found in the hub
  
• Cutscene at the end of the Prologue has been reworked
  
• Mouse pointer now has a new design
  
• New syncro has been added in the hub
  
• Collecting trading cards now has an icon
  
• Pick up trading cards sound was added
  
• Minor graphic adjustments

We thank you and wish you continued enjoyment with Neospace Prologue
Robin Hoffmann - DreamStudios CEO

Hello Community,

Today, I have some great news for you and would like to update you on our upcoming plans.

Many of you have expressed a desire for beach and sunshine, and I'm excited to provide just that soon. I've prepared a few screenshots as a preview.

Once this map is completed, I'll also be working on a forest scene for long walks. Other ideas include locations like underwater worlds, caves, or even outer space.

I'm also considering special places that create a sad but calming atmosphere what I call "special locations." The exact look of these places is still being planned.

I hope you're looking forward to the upcoming map.

Coming soon - Paradise Island







Furthermore, I wish you a good relaxation.

---

- Discord
- Twitch
- YouTube
- Steam Franchise
- Twitter
- Facebook

- Fixed an issue where you would be unable to swap away from the manual goalie
- Improved animations for batting and small tweaks on wrist shots
- Tentative fix for referee losing his helmet during faceoff

• Leaders introduced
  
• Shop UI implemented
  
• Damage stats panel added

• Can now click on a unit to see their stats at any time
  
• Damage stats panel added
  
• Relics with stacks now show in tooltips
  
• Positive buffs are now blue and negative buffs are now red (with a couple exceptions)
  
• Shop UI added (bench area is still a work in progress)
  
• Various Relic visual effects added
  
• Various Relic models added
  
• Various Relic sound effects added
  
• Various Relic icons added
  
• Various Relic death and cast animations added
  
• Various Relic tooltips updated

• Many animations added

View all Leaders: https://relicarena.com/leaders

Note: Most of the Leader art is temporary

View all Relics: https://relicarena.com/relics

• New Relic: Bazooka
  
• New Relic: Kevlar Vest
  
• New Relic: Mammoth Fossil

• All Relics now scale properly with 8 points
  
• Aztec Sun Stone: Juicy replaced with Ring of Fire: hits all enemies
  
• Boomerang: Cast range increased to 2000 for the base spell
  
• Boomerang: Super 1 - Serrated Boomerang: -3 stacking armor debuff
  
• Boomerang: Super 2 - Jumbo Boomerang: -300% speed, +300% size, stuns for 1.5s
  
• Boomerang: Super 3 - Fiery Boomerang: Boomerang deals 50 magic DPS for 5s to units hit
  
• Kris Blade: fixed to work with Tommy Gun
  
• Hammurabi’s Code: Juicy fixed to no longer give allies damage return if they’ve selected the Super that provides an aura
  
• Mask of Agamemnon: Fixed to be undispellable
  
• Oil Lamp: Genie no longer has a leash for the base spell
  
• Oil Lamp: Genie base damage from 50/100/150/200/250 to 30/60/90/120/150
  
• Oil Lamp: Genie Phantom Fist damage from 10/20/30/40/50 to 30/60/90/120/150
  
• Oil Lamp: Genie Super 1 no longer reduces Genie stats
  
• Plague Doctor Mask: Debuff duration from 10 to 30s

This week we're back to Sprung's series on unit improvement mechanics missing from Zero-K. After Mighty Morphing, it's time to tackle veterancy. This one still exists, well, sort of.

Already in Zero-K's oldest ancestor, Total Annihilation, units could gain veterancy via kills. The TA interface was fairly cryptic as to what exactly this meant: it provided no further information beyond adding the single word "Veteran" when mousing over units with at least 5 kills. Those of us who spent days shelling enemy bases with Big Berthas often noticed the improved accuracy. With a lot of effort it was possible to discover a minor increase in health as well. Frontline combat units were out of luck though, with veterancy being quite hard to obtain and having barely noticeable effects.



Zero-K is not constrained by the TA engine though, it runs on Spring (now Recoil), which expanded upon veterancy from early in its development. So by the time Complete Annihilation came around, veterancy did three things:

• Increase the health of the unit.
  
• Reduce the reload time of the unit's weapons.
  
• Reduce the inaccuracy of the unit's weapons.

Spring also moved to a fairer system of doling out experience: damage dealt is counted rather than kills, and the cost of the attacker and defender are taken into account. This means a cheap glass cannon like Glaive can rack up a lot of experience by shooting at a commander, while a Detriment can destroy whole armies without learning much. In a sense, veterancy depends on how well a unit is expected to do, given the resources invested into it. Higher veterancy units also gave out more veterancy when damaged, and the bonuses were applied smoothly with formulas rather than at set thresholds. Veterancy was more attainable and impactful, but this revealed problems.

Consider increased health, at certain health thresholds a unit starts taking extra shots to kill. On its own this is fine: C&C games, where veterancy grants both health and damage, tend to make anti-infantry units such as Tanya deal either 90% or 110% of basic infantry's health in damage per shot, specifically so that it flips between taking 1 or 2 shots depending on the shooter's and/or the target's veterancy. One of the things that prevents such elegance in ZK is that the rock-paper-scissor relationships between units are not as sharply delimited or as closely followed. You can't have simple rules like "basic infantry with 2 chevrons can survive a commando hit" if there is neither basic infantry nor commandos, nor discrete chevrons for that matter. Role counter relationships such as raider (roughly corresponding to basic infantry) and riot (Tanya) exist, but there is massive variety within them. Players would have to learn and memorise a huge relational spreadsheet of how each of Zero-K's dozen raiders fares in a fight against any other raider at any given pair of ranks to stay competitive, not to mention all the other unit types.



Reload time caused even more trouble, since time is actually discrete. In layman's terms, this means that reload times have to be in steps of 0.033 seconds. Again, raiders tend to be affected by this the most, as their fast firing weapons don't have much wiggle room. Glaive has a reload time of 0.1s, which is three steps of 0.033. From there, you can only reduce it to two steps, which represents +50% more fire rate. This is too steep! Another effect is that some units with slow projectiles were designed to land their projectile just before their reload finishes. This is a crude form of overkill protection, since if the target is dead you don't need to shoot it twice. A slight improvement to reload meant the unit would waste the follow-up shot on a unit that was just about to die.

Inaccuracy was usually the least problematic of the three, since most units tend to be perfectly accurate. But some are inaccurate on purpose, and a mandatory increase in accuracy would drastically redesign the unit on the fly, leaving you with something potentially useless for its original role. For example, an accurate Tremor fails to damage most of its usual area of effect, making it useless against cloak or wide terrain deformation. (As an aside, the original CA Tremor was just a tiny Disco Rave Party on wheels.)



Specific issues aside, all veterancy bonuses further reinforce snowballing in an already snowbally genre. Losing units makes your army weaker, but with veterancy it also makes the enemy army stronger. This necessitates some way to avoid even battles snowballing into victory after a few early pickoffs, either by diminishing the advantage or facilitating comebacks. C&C seems to achieve it largely by having units counter each other very hard, such that even elite units cannot hope to stand against their counter; there is also a cap on veterancy level so a unit cannot grow into infinity. Warcraft and DotA heroes give more experience and take longer to respawn when killed at a higher level, and each level is progressively harder to attain. Of course we could come up with a decent system, but is the extra complexity worth it? Besides, ZK already gives you a little extra for killing enemy units; but where other games do that via veterancy, ZK gives you wreckage to reclaim. This may not feel as cool as getting elite units, but it is such a deep and elegant mechanic we are quite happy with it.



Another reason to avoid veterancy bonuses is that simple stat bonuses affect formulas rather than physics. C&C again has a decent approach there: veteran units that reach the highest "elite" rank sometimes get an improvement in behaviour in addition to raw numerical stats. For example, heavy tanks get splash damage, or RA3 infantry gets immunity to dog stun. But at that point you become something more, a different unit in some ways, which should be reflected in its visuals. Rank icons, the way they are used in every other RTS, are way too salient for mere stats, and too un-salient for behaviour differences. The main hurdle here is that ZK artwork is essentially a loose bunch of assets collected from a wide gamut of volunteers over years, and there is simply no manpower for introducing such extras. Historically we actually had some models with a handful of progressively stronger looking variants, but that was just a drop in the ocean with barely any consistency. This is also one of the big reasons why we don't have research - a stronger unit needs to appear stronger visually as well, whether via research, veterancy, or any other mechanic. What you see is what you get.



Soon enough, stat gains from veterancy were removed, and technical capabilities were fairly low at the time so it wasn't really possible to implement things like weapon type changes. But veterancy is cool, we must have it! As hinted in the article on morphing, the solution was to let units with enough veterancy morph into whatever was a bit stronger and looked vaguely appropriate, and then sometimes not even that. Flea morphed into Glaive, sine they both lived in the "cloaky" factory at the time, i.e. Arm T1 KBot. Glaive morphed into Reaver, then Knight. Knight morphed into Crab, since Knight lived in the "spider" factory, Arm T2 KBot. This chain ended at Detriment. Many units could upgrade this way via veterancy, and many upgrade paths stayed well after factions were merged and factories shuffled.

People loved this! The fantasy of a Flea evolving into Detriment seemed really cool. Unfortunately, it remained a fantasy. Sure, people could do it in games vs AI, and there is one known case in PvP where a top 10 player did it as a show-off when toying with a first-timer, but chain-morphing never really happened in competitive games. There were just a handful of viable morphs that people aimed for. But in addition to being slapped onto effectively random units without any prior design, there were all the problems of morphing, and veterancy made it extra bad because it was so reactive. When your Knights get countered by skirmishers, Crab is the perfect answer - but you cannot plan for your Knights to get enough veterancy. You can merely hope one of them randomly happens to survive in combat long enough, and great power swings should not come from such unreliable sources.



Ultimately, these veterancy-based morph options were removed as well. As a fun fact, this revealed a minor factory design problem, which led to the creation of Redback. Spider did not have the "DPS riot" role filled by any spider at the time, but Flea was so cheap that you could reliably get one to high enough rank to morph straight to Reaver by shooting anything for about two seconds. The hole in the lineup became evident after losing access to Reaver, so Redback was quickly thrown together to fill it.

Modern ZK units still gain veterancy, represented by rank icons above them. Mechanically, it does absolutely nothing (beyond inspire modders). But getting icons makes players intuitively feel good and rewarded, so we keep it. Often though, players start to suspect that there isn't actually any benefit to veterancy, and they ask questions. Should I aim to gain veterancy? Should I protect my veterans? To which we say: yes! The effect of getting ranks is that your enemy no longer has the units you had to kill to get those ranks, and this is already something that directly helps your goals. Veterancy is also a nice way to explicitly gauge how well a unit is doing, though there is some bias against categories of units like artillery and superweapons that often shoot into the fog of war, since in order to prevent leaking information, only visible damage is counted.



The final clue to why we avoid rewarding veterancy can be seen by looking at high skill WC3 or DotA gameplay. And after all, what is levelling heroes if not an extreme case of veterancy? In both these games, you often want to kill your own units just to prevent the enemy from getting experience. In DotA the metagame is optimised so that each hero on the team gets the "correct" amount of experience (and gold, which comes from killing enemies as well so can also be considered a soft form of veterancy), with supports sometimes forgoing it in favour of cores.

In ZK we anticipate problems and immediately bite whatever bullets may appear in the future. The powerful UI would allow you to squeeze quite a lot out of veterancy optimisations such as selective self-destruction to prevent enemy veterancy, and holding fire so that units with worse scaling don't "steal last hits" from the better ones. High skill ceiling? Definitely. Mostly obsoleted by automation? Maybe. Do we want to find out, and possibly lead players into the weeds of optimising this kind of engagement minutiae? Rather not.

Index of Cold Takes