Aug 16, 2024

KOTCL Developer Diaries: One Week After Release. We're Alive!

Knock on the Coffin Lid - marfonium

Knock-knock, travelers!

This is Andrey, aka Innrey, founder of RedBoon. The first week has passed, and I wanted to take a moment to talk to you and share some updates.

First and foremost, I want to express my immense gratitude to everyone who has noticed us. There are so many of you that we’re still in shock. At the same time, we couldn’t be happier that our game has garnered so much attention. Thank you all for your streams, your attention, your feedback, and your incredible support! We see, watch, and read everything you’re saying, and it’s incredibly inspiring for us. We’re working hard to improve the game and promise that, thanks to your feedback, we’ll be able to bring it to perfection in the coming months.

Let me share some numbers. The average time spent in KOTCL is 14 hours (which is already great), and the average daily number of players online is around 1600. Our record is approximately 2500 players at once! That’s a huge number for us (and our bugs).

Speaking of bugs, yes, given that we didn’t expect such a huge surge of "playtesters," things turned out the way they did. Unfortunately, we simply didn’t have the capacity to test everything as thoroughly as you have. But thanks to your reports, we’re managing to fix them quickly. As one of our players said on our Discord server, “If there are no bugs in your program, it just means you haven’t found them yet.” And that’s true :) So, we’re still tackling a mountain of bugs, but it’s rapidly shrinking. At the very least, we’ve already fixed most of the critical issues that were breaking the game.

This past week, we’ve really been on a roll. We haven’t slept much, but we’ve gotten a lot done. So, we’ll probably take a few days to rest and catch up on sleep. After that, with fresh energy, we’ll dive back in full force! We promise to reduce the number of patches and do more testing so you can enjoy the game without issues. If you have the time to help us with testing, we’d love to see you on the open beta branch. Also, a big balance patch is coming soon, so don’t miss it!

Once again, thank you for your support and attention! We’ll do everything we can to ensure that Knock on the Coffin Lid reaches perfection.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Aug 16, 2024

Dev Diary #13

Wet Sand - Shroomie

Hello, pirates!

Back to you with the developer diaries and want to share information on the Wet Sand project.

So, as has been said many times before, we decided to break chapter 4 into several parts so you don't have to wait years for a new update. There are now 8 parts designated, the first of which has been released. The 0.6.4 update turned out to be a small one, but that's the way we planned it. Consider it an introduction to the underwater part of the adventure.

What is waiting for you next? There will be 3 more updates of the underwater part, and after them 4 more in the familiar atmosphere of a pirate ship for you, drunken sailors. We will try to prepare the next update by mid-October, and it will be several times bigger than the previous one.

What are we doing?

Work! The important stage is now underway - the text is already written, it's being smoothly added to the game, there are some discussions on clarifications/scenes, and the artist is finalizing sketches of all the work for the chapter, to then work on them together with the outsourcer as if on an assembly line.
But don't think it's been a month and we don't have anything finished at all! We started with sprites, and we can show one of them now:

Another Aquanite in the game? Yes!

Unlike some previous articles, here we can't (or rather, we don't want to) give information about the plot, because we want you to see everything in the game. All we can say is that this adventure will be a momentous one for Fabian, because he will meet many (5-6) unusual characters, will go to the bottom in search of something important, will get into dangerous situations and as always will be surrounded by charming girls. In the end, Fabian will go through a peculiar way of realizing himself and his true goals.

Well, to get a little imagination of the places you will visit, you can look at the sketches:

Thanks for your interest and support! Bye, everyone!

Aug 16, 2024

UPDATE: 16 NEW ACHIEVEMENTS

Pizza Hero - JD

Pizza Hero version 0.3.22 introduces 16 new achievements along with numerous other updates.

Updates

Added 16 new achievements for endless mode, 4 for each game world.
Updated Hands enemy in Hunting Hollows to be disabled and go back into the ground upon level up to avoid immediate damage when going back to the game.
Updated achievements for total games played, reduced amount of games for higher tier so now tier 8 is for 1000 games played instead of 5000. Also now just starting a game doesn't count, only games actually played count towards completing these achievements: completed world, game over or first cycle of waves completed in endless mode.
Now achievements can also be awarded in Game Over menu and World Completed menu.
Updated Recipes menus to show larger notes and improve readability.
Update Level Up UI to show the selected recipe in a larger scale.
Further increased size of labels used to show current level of toppings while in game.
Made various minor changes and adjustments.

Fixes

Fixed a bug causing daily challenges to only work once and then not being redeemable anymore.
Fixed direction arrow not turning green when fully charged after first usage.
Fixed a bug causing issues with upgrades notification (red dot) with maxed out upgrades.
Fixed issue causing enemies to stop spawning under certain conditions.
Fixed sound effects for Can spawning and collection.
Implemented various other minor fixes.

Join the Discord!

WISHLIST THE NEXT GAME FROM ASTRO HOUND 👇

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3051480/Disposition/?curator_clanid=45088963

Aug 16, 2024

Development Update: Immediate Future Plans

Level Zero: Extraction - Antishyr | tinyBuild

Hi again, Mercs & Aliens,

As promised, we’re keeping you updated so that you’re aware of everything happening with the game's development. Today, let's talk about the current known issues we’re working on right now, which we consider the highest priority to resolve. We’ll strive to solve these issues as quickly as possible, but some of them will take more time, and we are diligently working on them.

This post is intended to help us all understand that the game will improve soon and to save us time studying feedback and identifying new issues.

Before we start, I want to thank you for your patience and love for the game. We see it, and it’s what motivates us the most. ❤️

Okay, let’s start with the priority tasks that affect both playable classes.

Many players are complaining about lag during gameplay, which occurs due to high ping when matchmaking, after a long wait, places you in a distant region. We’re already working on region selection, which requires a matchmaking overhaul and will appear in the upcoming hotfix updates within two weeks.
The cheater report system will expand with each patch. The first iteration will be released next week, and it will give us more power to ban cheaters. We’ll be able to automate this process even more. Just yesterday, there was a wave of bans, and I think you noticed that there were significantly fewer cheaters in the second half of the day. Each report of a suspicious player is looked at and we’re automating the process while we’re working on it. This will allow us to deal with cheaters more strictly.
Experimental solo mode: This is a complex and large task as it will affect the game’s balance and might split the player base, impacting matchmaking. We’re working on it and figuring out how to implement it correctly. In this mode, there will be one alien against solo mercs. The number of mercs will be determined after testing.

Priority issues for Alien Monsters

The UV lamp and weapon flashlight not turning off with EMP is a bug that will be fixed in the patch next week. We have decided to temporarily remove them from the store until we implement the hotfix in the game, as they significantly impact Aliens' gameplay.
The monster’s abilities are activating slowly, and sometimes activating the EMP light kills you when it should turn off. We’re looking for a solution to fix this, and we need more time to rework the technical aspects of the monster’s abilities.
After fixing the damage registration from light on the Alien, it has started dying noticeably faster. We believe the Alien shouldn’t die quickly and should have the opportunity to react to external threats so as not to cause frustration. We’ve decided to seriously rework this aspect of the game so that Aliens don’t die quickly but also so that they need to retreat for a while to gather resources after an attack, giving the mercs a chance to catch their breath. This is a complex task requiring testing and balance adjustments. We’ll prototype and test the new alien gameplay within the team, as it’s a very important part of the game. Alien gameplay has never been secondary to us, and in the future, you’ll see many changes in this aspect. You will notice the reduced light damage in today's server-side hotfix.
Slowing down the monster’s attacks is a mechanic designed to prevent the Alien from rushing into the light. This mechanic introduced a bug where the attack slowdown lingers throughout the entire game session. We’re investigating the cause of this bug and will try to fix it in the next patch.
Alien attacks currently feel unpleasant. We want to test faster monster attacks to eliminate the delay between hits, reducing the damage but keeping the damage per second intact. If we see that it works well within the team, you’ll see it in the next patch.
Aliens burn out after the blackout ends. We plan to add a notification about the end of the blackout so that Aliens have a chance to react to the light turning back on.
The trap egg placement needs improvement. We’re working on reworking it. We’ve gathered feedback, and we have a solution, but it will take time.
The drone currently slows down the Alien with its flashlight. We plan to remove this aspect in the next patch.

Priority issues for Mercs

Item switching currently feels very unresponsive and, as many say, clunky. We have a solution to this problem and are already working on reworking item switching. It’s a very complex task that, while it might seem simple, requires completely reworking part of the inventory logic from a technical standpoint. We plan to include this fix in the next major update but don’t expect it in hotfix patches. Rest assured, item switching will work at its best. We’ve already tested a prototype of this mechanic within the team, and it feels great. The rework has introduced many bugs, so we need time to fix them before adding this to the game. We’re thinking of making a video of this prototype to show you how it works.
Merc animation improvements: Currently, there are many ugly, unpleasant visual moments in the character animations from both first-person and third-person perspectives, such as animation jerks, camera jerks during movement, freezes, and stuttering. All of these are being addressed and will be gradually included in hotfixes.
Mercs can currently quickly swap flashlights to abuse EMP, switching to a non-affected flashlight in an instant. We want to have only one flashlight (or UV lamp) in quick slots. The solution for this is still being considered, but we’ll share more details on that later.
We also want syringes to stack in inventory and quick slots to save space. We’re working on that, but you should expect that change later than all the aforementioned changes above. We will also change syringe healing from instant to HoT (healing over time) to avoid spam healing.

We've deployed a server-side hotfix; there is no need to restart the client or download any updates. Enjoy the game!

Server-Side Hotfix

The List of Changes

After we fixed an issue with the light damage appliance for aliens, we unexpectedly experienced increased light damage instead of reduced damage. We're now deploying a server-side fix to address that.

Light damage of Flashlight, UV Lamp, and Flares is reduced by 20%;
UV Lamp and Tactical Flashlight are temporarily unavailable to purchase while we're working on EMP hotfix.

Last but not least, here's a teaser of one of the skins that will be available soon in the customization menu:

Thanks again for your support, and see you soon,
the Doghowl Team