Greetings, Ravens!

We're pushing a small patch today to take care of community reports. Thank you, everyone, for helping us track some of those bugs!

If you missed it, we unveiled our plans for the future of Ravenswatch:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/2071280/announcements/detail/4658502078447529054


🐦= Community reports

• 🐦 Rerolling Talents Lvl. 9: Fixed an issue that displayed "???" when rerolling Talents at level 9
  
• 🐦 Carmilla: Fixed a bug where the 'Injection' Talent didn't deal damage to Baba Yaga
  
• 🐦 Sun Wukong: Fixed a crash when Sun Wukong transfigured into Carmilla
  
• Skins:
  
  • 🐦 Fixed an issue where some of Geppetto's skins would not unlock upon completing the condition
    
  • 🐦 Fixed an issue where other Skins would unlock with Sun Wukong
• 🐦Intro video: The sound of the animated intro video is now part of the general volume and can be turned down
  
• Social: Friendslist, Blacklist, Reports, and Recent Players are now accessible
  
• 🐦 Localization: Various localization updates

• Golden Egg won't display the proper numbers in its description

- The Passtech Team 🍉


Passtech Games Discord Ravenswatch Twitter Passtech Games Twitter Ravenswatch Subreddit Passtech Games Twitch Passtech Games Website

Have fun collecting and happy Halloween!

Greetings fellow ants,

We’ve partnered up with former Starcraft 2 pro-player & commentator FunkaSC2 to show you a more in-depth look at how the Multiplayer modes work!





🐜 Pre-Order Empire of the Ants now

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287330/Empire_of_the_Ants/

📬 Stay connected!

Official Empire of the Ants Reddit - Official Empire of the Ants Twitter - Tower Five Studio - Official Empire of the Ants Discord

THRONE AND LIBERTY Update 1.5.0 downtime will begin at 10:30 p.m. PT (5:30 a.m. UTC) on October 30 and last approximately 6 hours. It includes the Battle Pass: Phantom Tracker’s Star, new Epic reward selection chests for Field Bosses, and various bug fixes.

Check out the full release notes below.

• The Battle Pass: Phantom Tracker’s Star season will start on October 31, featuring new emotes, an Amitoi, and an outfit, among other useful items and materials for your journeys in Solisium!
  
• The Lucent shop has been updated with a new outfit, morph, and Amitoi to match your seasonally spooky vibe.

• Field Boss: Increased the rate of boss portal scaling to the amount of players participating, providing more instances to spread players between fights and increase individual chances to earn contribution rewards.
  
• Field Boss: Added Epic reward selection chests that have a chance of being acquired when receiving participation rewards for Field Boss contribution. These boxes allow players to select from any of the Epic items that boss has a chance of dropping.
  
• Dungeon: Death's Abyss: Fixed an issue that allowed Karnix to be defeated by gravity.
  
• Combat: The crowd control immunity gauge will now fill more quickly when players are targeted with multiple crowd control effects at the same time.
  
• Adventure Codex: Increased the amount of experience awarded from completing Adventure Codex objectives.
  
• Event Dungeons: Active party recruitment posts or matchmaking queues for special event dungeons will now cancel automatically if the event dungeon ends before recruitment is fulfilled.
  
• Items: Equipment Tooltips: New option added to preview an item's stats at maximum enhancement.
  
• Guilds: The Guild window now displays a guild's overall Guild Points, as well as the amount of Guild Activity Points and individual Guild Member Activity Points that contribute to it.
  
• Quests: Chapter 6: Restoring the Heart: Golem's Heart inspection now properly displays the second label.
  
• Crafting: Added crafting recipes for Queen Bellandir and Tevent equipment items.
  
• Chat: Customized chat tabs now remain in place if you leave a group or guild.
  
• Guilds: Creating guilds with multiple characters on the same account no longer defaults those guilds to Friendly.
  
• Movement: Characters now have a tighter turning radius when changing direction using mouse/keyboard controls.
  
• Localization: Applied latest localization updates, including the correction of several untranslated strings.
  
• Controller: Multiple controller functionality improvements for navigating menus and gameplay interactions.
  
• Arch Bosses: Fixed a rare issue that caused a crash during the Queen Bellandir event.
  
• Dynamic Events: Requiem of Light, Festival of Fire: Completing the final tier of these events should now grant personal completion rewards.
  
• Items: The Grin Reaper outfit now properly changes the boot color when dyed for all body types.

• Chat: Added two more customizable tabs to the chat interface, increasing the total to three.
  
• Health Bars: Character health bars now display the amount of shielding granted by skills.
  
• Targeting: Slightly increased the size of the UI indicator for currently selected targets.
  
• Stellar Vision: Added number indicators to the target list in the Stellar Vision window.
  
• Party Matchmaking: Window now retains previous settings when re-opened.

Thanks for your support. We’ll see you in Solisium!

Assemble your squad, No-Pat. This is Circle of Hell, where dreams have become nightmares and light has turned to darkness. Go in prepared with the Circle of Hell Accelerated Event Pass.

Get access to:
• 30 tiers of unlockable content
• 15 Tier Skips
• The Legendary """"Profane Apostle"""" outfit for Zain

Secure the top-tier content of the Event Pass – and unleash fury on every enemy that crosses your path.





https://store.steampowered.com/app/1517290/Battlefield_2042/

Greetings, Adventurers!

From voiceovers (VO) to sound design, discover how the Audio Team designed Nightveil Hallow. Once you’ve learned more about the voice and sound effects behind Baalphazu, confront the Marquis of Terror in-game for event-specific rewards before Nightveil Hallow ends on November 5.

Casting Baalphazu and Salvatore was rather unusual compared to how we typically handle that process. Starting with Salvatore, they wanted to have this voice pay homage to some of the great actors from the golden age of horror films like Vincent Price, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney. This became a rather challenging request to find just the right voice.


After reviewing dozens of reels from voice actors, I was chatting with one of our wonderful directors. They shared a general joy and excitement for the character, suggested some folks, and then later that day sent me an email out of the blue. Attached was a recording of an excerpt from The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe. Much to our delight, and from the initial confusion of “yes, that’s a perfect voice," to "if only we could find an actor to do something similar,” we had cast our Salvatore.

We were sitting on pins and needles, nervous but excited during the first recording session. As soon as it started, the entire crew was grinning from ear to ear. A few of us couldn’t help but chime in during breaks and pauses to sing our praises about how he sounded just like one of those golden age actors.

We knew from a design perspective that Baalphazu was going to be really intense and vocally very straining. So, we wanted to make sure whoever we cast for the role could handle screeches, screams, growls and more.


The voice behind Baalphazu is Molly Scarpine, an incredibly talented metal vocalist who just so happens to specialize in extreme creature vocals. Molly was recommended to us initially by our Director Maddie Stratton as a “hey, check out this vocalist and her band. They’re really cool.” After hearing Molly’s music, we knew we had to get her in for something awesome. Then this boss came around, handed to me as a lovely gift.

Molly was such a wonderful person to record with and gave us a plethora of variations for each line. I just have this vivid memory of Molly shrugging and calling out that she’s doing great after being asked how she’s feeling, and then going in for the next take. Easily one of the coolest sessions I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending.

Holiday content is always a lot of fun to work on, and I think Halloween might be my favorite. The dark and scary nature of the holiday opens up a huge amount of possibilities for sound design. You can push the envelope into weird and creative territories to enrich the experience.

Starting with great source material makes the remainder of the process an absolute joy. The unique vocal tonalities that Molly can achieve, in addition to the raw emotion that comes through in the recording, gave Baalphazu their own unique voice, even before the VO design.


We knew the voice needed to evoke terror, and strike fear into the hearts of all who inhabit the island. With that in mind, I started by splitting the voice into three separate channels for unique processing. The first layer was meant to provide clarity in the spoken line. I used very light pitch and delay processing to give it a bit of a larger than life feel, but was careful about going too far and making the lines unintelligible. This gave the voice an eerie, demonic doubling effect.

The next two layers were where I wanted to take advantage of the strange nature of Halloween and push it into something weird, horrifying, and unique. I was inspired by a sound we all know and hate, nails on a chalkboard. I found that you can get similar, but unique results from sliding a shower ring across a metal rod. I took these unsettling sounds and used an envelope follower, which mirrored the amplitude of the VO lines, to bring that texture into the voice.

The final layer was where I went nuts. I threw everything and the kitchen sink at it to see what would happen. The result ended up being a low-pitched layer with some aggressive modulation. I used a slight reversal effect along with a formant filter hooked up to an LFO to give a constant tonal shift that somewhat mimics a human voice. These three layers, along with the strong VO performance, gave Baalphazu an identity of their own.


After working with Molly’s vocals, the Audio Team had the opportunity to go into their own creative space and finish off the character’s sound scape with the sound effects (SFX).

I started with something familiar to me, the violin. The amount of emotion and expressivity you can communicate through the violin is something I haven’t experienced with anything else. But… it’s also capable of producing some of the nastiest, most unsettling screeches and scrapes to ever pierce your ears.

This was the starting point for Baalphazu’s base ability, the Wing Stab. The ability to control pitch and that nasty timbre allowed me to give the lead-up and execution of the attack the motion they needed. These recordings, along with the creaky, wooden branch foley for the wings and a splash of fire, gave this attack its voice.

Continuing my experimentation with musical instruments, I reached for a 1920s Chickering piano as source material for the Reap ability. During this attack, the ground is lit with a green flame, then Baalphazu pulls their challengers in close and summons rings of fire that damage all who are near. The piano is used in the lead-up to the pull, giving the players a tell that something is on the horizon.

I rubbed a spoon across the bare piano strings in all different directions and found that the upward direction gave a great sense of tension and anticipation. The metal spoon scraping against the metal of the piano strings provided that discomforting signature that worked so well for this character. The piano mixed with elements of fire, thunder, chains, and the souls of the Netherworld beneath, convey the sheer terror that Baalphazu encapsulates.


I had an amazing time working on all of the different aspects of Baalphazu. Each one introduced an opportunity to try something new, push the creative envelope, and come up with a unique sonic signature that fit with the character. The combination of deliberate casting, incredible performance, and the ability to explore new ideas created an environment for the team to flourish. These, along with a massive group effort from all the developers came together to create this great new experience.

Thanks for your support!

We’ll see you in the shadows of Aeternum.

EDIT: In case you missed the stream you can view the recorded video here:
https://youtu.be/irr19TxO-tc?si=E764MqAArI-4lVYw

---

Join us, Thorium, for an afternoon of UnderMine 2 questions and answers!

It has officially been six months since we unveiled UnderMine 2, and we've been buried in development, building a ton of new content.

We're eager to show you what we have been working on and to take your questions about the game! Questions are being collected on Discord. Post your questions in the #questions-for-the-devs channel, or upvote the ones you want to hear more about.

We'll answer the most upvoted questions from Discord, take questions from the chat, discuss new features, and show parts of the game we haven't shown before. In case you missed our first Q&A, you can watch the archived video here.

Make sure to follow us on Twitch so you don't miss out. The stream will be Thursday, November 7th, at 2:00 pm PDT!

• Removed fade effects from player names.

It's hard to believe, but the names on the characters were the main cause of the game's lag, especially in alphabets like Chinese, it was reloading the TMP Text component every frame, so we were experiencing a huge framerate drop. To solve this, we removed the fade effect of the names, and in technical terms, we made sure that if the variables are the same, they will not reload. So you will no longer experience lag. I've tried it and I approve it.

Only a month and a few more days until Diesel Legacy is out for everyone to dive into! The team has been putting the last finishing touches on everything (including preparing the final playable launch character)-- but we've still got a lot of great stuff to show you!

• Saga Teaser
  
• Intro Animation Progress
  
• More Arcade Mode Teasers
  
• Highlight Clips of October

Saga is coming! We promise! Her trailer will be out this month, but to tide y'all over, here's a few small teasers.

Saga's Idle Animation.


Each character will come with several story art images. In Diesel Legacy, one man rules the Iron City from the shadows with an Iron Fist.

Here's our work-in-progress teasers, showing off different development stages!


The CEO, early draft animated sketch.


The CEO, refined animated sketch.


Another character in the story?


The CEO pondering very evil CEO-y things.



Want to kick back and chill by yourself or with a friend? Rather not deal with the human opponents element? Nostalgic for the dying arcade experience? Arcade mode will be perfect for you!

As previously noted, Diesel Legacy is launching with a fun co-op twist on the typical arcade mode, including these features:

• Climb a single player or team match ladder (with your teammate being local or online)
  
• Mini-Bosses / Challenges
  
• Boss Fights
  
• High Scores and Leaderboards
  
• Unlockables (for use in the entire game)

This month, we launched the Nyra hype trailer-- a lightning quick teaser going through her movelist and some ridiculous solo combos that you can master.


Dieselmech's Gravel Crusher is a super quick overhead that can convert into some beefy damage. Best part? You turn into a tank midway through.


Eleanora has a full wardrobe full of different colors that best represent her... morally ambiguous hobbies. Question is, which one are you claiming for your own?


If you love to keep your opponents guessing while styling on them, Rotwang and his versatile jetpack is perfect for that.


---

Excited to get your hands on everything? Let us know what you think in the comments!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1959140/Diesel_Legacy_The_Brazen_Age/

Discord: https://discord.gg/qZczTqaXsr
X: @DieselLegacy
Instagram: @DieselLegacyGame
Facebook: @DieselLegacy

Cheers,
Your Diesel Legacy/Maximum Entertainment Team

Commanders!

Thank you all for voting in our XK3 naming contest. We are now ready to announce the results.



After a disqualification of one of the leading entries, it was the name Phantom that received the most votes. The same name was submitted several times (in fact, 22 times) but the first player to submit it was Pasta_Senpai.

He will receive his prize upon the launch of the Seahawks Battle Path and the vehicle will be renamed to XK3 Phantom momentarily. Thank you all who have participated in the contest and, as always:

See you on the battlefield!