Hello. As mentioned before a regular content update has been long overdue and this one brings it in spades! In it you'll find a new character, new items, new power-ups, new mission type, new special enemies, new synergies between weapons and items, a new soundtrack, and plenty of other changes and tweaks.


Please welcome Leman to the character roster. He carries a rusty sword and has an unmask ability to scare off enemies - potentially to death!




Exciting new synergies between weapons and items are now found randomized for each run.




Previously weapon and item stats were randomized at start of run and then left as is for the remainder of run. This meant that if e.g. you saw an Epic weapon but did not choose it, it would still be that same Epic weapon when coming up next time around. Now these stats randomize during the run so you're not suffering from a potentially bad seed and things are always fresh.

There's a whole new soundtrack replacing the in-game and menu tunes which I hope you enjoy.

As for everything else, check out the full changelog below for all the additions and changes.


I should mention that all leaderboard scores have been cleared for versions before v. 0.7.5. This is when big score changes were introduced.


General

• New character: Leper - Melee fighter with Unmask ability
  
• New item: Treasure Map - Spawns a random treasure chest on the map. Once found, spawns another
  
• New item: Poor Man's Trinket - Damage increase to all Weak weapons
  
• New item: Painkillers - Invincibility whenever taking damage
  
• New power-up: Student - Reduces weapon incompatibility penalty
  
• New power-up: Gold Digger - More gold from ore deposits (removed from Miner power-up)
  
• New power-up: Map - Reveals the full map at start of run
  
• New mission type: Fetch - Collect missing crates and bring them back
  
• New enemy/elite type: "Bomber" - Shoots a fire projectile with AoE damage. Stays further away
  
• New enemy type: "Suicider" - Runs fast at you and explodes on impact. Has 2x health and 3x the damage on explosion
  
• New enemy formation attack: Suicide Squad - As you'd expect
  
• New weapon synergies with items
  
• New setting: Event log messages (Default: On, replaced event log messages near player)
  
• New soundtrack
  
• Weapon/item rarity change: Stats are randomized whenever a weapon/item is: Not chosen on level up, Reroll button is used on level up, Consumed (e.g. Reanimate) or Sold
  
• To spice things up special enemies start to appear earlier in the game (from 1min onwards instead of 3)
  
• Barracks building is found on all Desert maps
  
• Sandworm pull force is a bit stronger than player base speed so you can get away by running or using haste
  
• Sandworm will not appear during an ongoing mission
  
• Protect missions no longer have a mission radius
  
• Challenge missions will have double the outside timer limit as usual missions
  
• Gold Ores have a lot more gold but the damage needed to mine them increases with each coin
  
• Elite Sorcerer additionally curses the player when doing damage with the pentagram. This effect (-25% damage resistance) can be removed at the Church
  
• Dogs and Farmers target enemies better (previously random target location, now actually where enemies are)
  
• Incompatible weapons have varying penalty amounts (10-50%)
  
• Incompatible weapon type penalty is not applied to starting weapons but is otherwise if not matching character type
  
• Barracks gives you the option to buy new slots if they are full when buying a party member
  
• Barracks has the option to customize character attack/ability mode during the run
  
• Cart driver and Bear will only strike enemies on the ground
  
• Flyby "line" rows increase as time goes by and they can also have a wavy movement pattern
  
• Mage initial health decreased from 100 to 75
  
• Party members rewarded from missions count only 50% towards their price increase in barracks
  
• Character Endurance debuffed for player damage resistance (used to be 50% END, now 30%)
  
• Added an "Equipped" tab to Power-ups screen
  
• Added 1 new rune reward
  
• Added more control info under in-game quick pause
  
• Tutorial has had some improvements on presenting the information
  
• Setting sliders allow for clicking anywhere on the slider bar to make a change (mouse only)
  
• Simplified the top GUI. Health and energy are now always displayed near the player
  
• Highlighted all important consumable on the ground with an arrow
  
• Increased the overall contrast of visuals
  
• Removed the setting to show small damage numbers (it is now default instead of 1000x)

Bugs

• Challenge missions did not occur on some maps. These missions had a couple of other issues as well such as the mission not spawning where the elite was
  
• Canceling teleport would still leave a decoy behind

Step A
So! A quick guide to raising trogles in March March Caves!
We decided that we needed an individual stuffed with spores as much as possible and developed several sketches for a zombified trogl.

Step B
Now we need to pick a sketch and render it. For that we're using Photoshop. We also need to draw each limb/body piece. That way we will be able to use it for skeletal animation in Spine.



Step C
After Photoshop file with layers is ready, we export it to Spine and begin the rigging stage.
To put it simply, rigging includes all the preparations for subsequent animation.

• Added ads that advertise my stuff (sorry)

• If players have paid for Infiland games, DLCs or similar previously, the frequency of ads is reduced, while some (like the soundtrack) would be completely removed.
  
• Frequency of ads changes depending on level and what they bought
  
• Ads will only be shown on the main menu, ads will not appear during gameplay
  
• Ads wont appear under level 15, unless players have played at least for 20 minutes (timer resets on game launch)
  
• Ads wont appear every time, it has 15% base chance for an ad to appear, chance increases up to level 200 up to 50%
  
• Each ad isn't advertising any other product other than my stuff, so no "inappropriate" ads are shown. Other opportunities to advertise on my game may come up though, just contact me on prayforniceland@gmail.com
  
• There may be an opportunity for me to add a free "disable ads" option in settings, however I'm thinking on making this more viable.

• Drops are now 2X more common
  
• The sun campaign no longer has dark green asteroids

• Fixed weapon drops not working properly
  
• Fixed bug where you can click on skill tree if you had a popup (weekly popup for example)
  
• Removed developer debug console if cheats are enabled (only to avoid exploits)

I know this would probably be a hated feature, however I hope you value the transparency of the game. It is only understandable that I do this in F2P game models, and ads in my paid games are avoided. It only makes sense for the frequency of ads to decrease as the player supports the game, which makes more sense and would act more like a game which someone paid for. Please give me feedback on this system, I want to make it right and fair for myself and players

If you want more quality updates, please donate!

CUSTOMIZATION MENU UPDATE

Updated the customization menu now contains much more space, and is much more polished. It will introduce more features (Soon to be announced), however for now contains a first name entry, last name entry, and character customization.

NEW BACKSTORIES

In every new career, your character will have a small selection of different backstories your character may have. This gives some more story behind your character and their origins, and why they chose to play football.

REMOVED ITEMS

• Player nationality: Has no specific use, and now you can be any nationality
  
• No more breakdown in the beginning stating height, trait, etc

BUG FIXES

• Fixed settings menu with music button glitch
  
• Fixed grammatical errors

As nothing is more important to us than taking into consideration the expectations of players, we have developed new features taking into account your suggestions, in order to make your gaming experience even more satisfying.

• Dash to the left: left bumper button.
  
• Dash to the right: right bumper button.
  
• Lowering the camera: right stick down, or right arrow + A button.
  
• Smooth camera: can be activated or deactivated in the Options menu.
  
• Integration of a summary screen of your achievements: accessible from the main screen.
  
• 3 Speedrun trophies: depending on the difficulty level.
  
• Viewing game time per level: in the level selection screen, using the X button.

You can also find the game OST album, on your favorite streaming platform.
Linktree:
https://argolabgames.com/index.php/extras/

To discover all the new features:

Greetings. The time has come for a new patch. Some work has been done, while some remains unfinished. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you about the new bugs; they will be revealed later, but here’s what we’ve added in terms of content.

- There is now a separate inventory tab for quest items. Quest items can no longer be lost, their rarity has also been reduced, but now they MINIMALLY increase road danger level. Upon the first launch of the patched game, all quest items and books will be moved to the new inventory tab (hopefully without issues).
- The Northeast is now open. Completed locations in the Northeast: Gravesville, Rebelton, Prudeshire, Upper Squintytown. Partially completed locations: Piousville, Boneton. To finish these locations, we need to add a few more areas, but it’s time to release the patch.



- A new mercenary has been added - the legendary commoner Neurobard Fofan.
- A new mercenary has been added - the epico Beekeeper.
- A new mercenary has been added - the legendary guard Djioy the Vagabond.
- A new mercenary has been added - the legendary Ghost Hunter.
- A mini-game in Hivesville (reward: some money and reputation, repeatable).
- Roosters in Cluckingtown now fight with swords.
- Super quick access menu for food and leveling scrolls.



- Additional reward after defeating Nurlan: +1 leveling point for mercenaries.
- Auto-save every 20 minutes in a backup slot. There are a total of 3 slots, so you will have the option to roll back in case of any bugs or loss of saves. Saving occurs upon entering a location if it's time. The "Make Backup" button has been removed from the game. Backups are local and do not upload to Steam Cloud because we suspect that power outages may also be related to save loss with Steam Cloud (just a suspicion).
- Korean language support has been added (fan-made, thanks to 변마).
- We are working on continuing the story part of the game and new locations, and now patches will likely be released more frequently: completed settlements - released patch, something like that.

Various balance fixes for new locations, bug removals, and other adjustments will be made after the patch release and receiving various feedback, as usual.

Whoop-whoop-whoop, wanderers!

Heya, it's the first of the month and I'm back to posting monthly devlogs! This month I mainly focused on completing the introduction level as well as bringing big advancements in optimisation to the game.

I do post previews on my discord so join that if you are interested.

Like in the previous month's devlog, the main focus was on finally completing the introduction level, which so far, is the most complex and time-consuming level in the entire game (There are already other levels finished, I just decided to make a new starting level).
This is because of the sheer scale of it, the new advanced lighting, as well as the tons of new assets that came along with it.

A big inspiration for this area was both the starting area of Portal 2, but also NaissanceE which has an amazing vibe to it. Essentially, the goal was to create a "grand introduction" with this giant, but still somewhat grounded area.

Anyways here are some screenshots.






.Along with the development of the first level. I realized that I was getting more and more lenient with poorer performance (which would be worse on low end devices).

.Mik now supports AMD's open source upscaling solution. There will be some more advanced customization for it in the settings menu, but for now it should help boost frame rates.

Much of the entry level as well as other levels have been changed to allow for better performance.

That's it for this month's (slightly) shorter devlog. Stay tuned for future updates!

Boss Portal Rift Adjustment:
We've moved the portal rift spawn slightly forward to prevent it from getting stuck.

Custom Unreal Engine Build:
Hi everyone,
To better diagnose and resolve issues in the game, we've created a custom version of Unreal Engine by editing it from the source code. This will allow us to identify and fix problems more effectively.

EULA Update:
We've added the following section to the EULA regarding crash reports:

"Crash Reports and Data Collection
To assist in diagnosing and resolving issues, Ominous collects crash reports that may include details about your PC hardware components, system information, and other relevant data. This information is used solely to improve the stability and performance of the game and to address issues that may cause crashes. By using Ominous, you consent to this data collection and agree that it may be shared with Jumpy Unit, Epic, and their affiliates solely for these purposes."

Hello, players!

We’re excited to share the latest improvements and bug fixes with this update:

New Mission Rewards Tab Added
A new tab has been added to view your mission rewards.

Bug Fix for Enter Key in Lobby
Resolved the issue where using the Enter key in the lobby caused problems.

Profile Difficulty Display Error Fix
Fixed the inconsistency with difficulty levels displayed on the profile screen.

Note Design Update
New note designs have been added, and the old ones have been removed.

Ocean game environment map Update
The ocean background has been updated for a fresh look.

Mission Feature Refactoring
The mission functionality has been improved for a smoother experience.


Thank you for your continued support! We are committed to providing the best gaming experience and will keep working to make it better.

Empire Chronicles (Version 2.4.3) - Minor Update

• Bug Fix: Slight Adjustment to door collision.
  
• Bug Fix: Cooldown rate on items was sometimes displaying incorrectly.