Oct 25

《Wild Assault》 Co-creation Project: Genesis of Ideas - Season 2 Launch!

Wild Assault - 狮兄

To all 《Wild Assault》 players and creators,

The first season's weapon skin design event was a great success! We were truly amazed by your talent and passion, and captivated by your design concepts and creativity. Precisely because of this, we've decided to level up the challenge for Season 2—introducing the Valiant Skin Co-creation Plan!

Our ultimate vision remains unchanged: to bridge the gap from "concept" to "implementation," giving your brilliant creations a chance to be officially added to the game!

Event details are as follows:

Event Period

October 26, 2025 – November 16, 2025 (Deadline: UTC 0:00, November 16)

Event Rules

Designated Valiants for this round: HONG YING or MARQUEZ.

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No restrictions on the design theme—freely unleash your creativity.
Once completed, upload and publish your design to the Beast Hunt: Assault Steam Community Artwork page. The official team will collect and review the entries. (As shown in the example image below.)

Design Guidelines

Maintain the Valiant's original proportions and structure, but feel free to customize elements, materials, and thematic patterns.
Submissions must include a front rendered view and a front flat view. Additional materials such as a three-view diagram, material descriptions, or texture maps are recommended.

All submissions must be original work. Plagiarism or unauthorized use of third-party materials is strictly prohibited.

Submission Requirements

File Format: JPG/PNG (Layered PSD file required for final implementation if selected)
Dimensions: Minimum 4000 × 2000 pixels (Note: Steam Community Artwork page has a 5MB upload limit; compressed files are acceptable)
DPI: Not less than 72

Rewards & Implementation

After the event concludes, we will select the top 10 outstanding works from all submissions. These designs will have the opportunity to be implemented in a future game update.
Winners may choose one in-game bundle of their choice as a reward.
Official staff will contact winning creators via the Steam Community Artwork page to request a Steam friend addition for reward distribution and follow-up coordination. Participants may also include alternative contact methods in their submission to ensure smooth communication.

We look forward to seeing your imaginative designs!

For any questions, please reach out via the Steam Community or official channels.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2827230/_/

Combat Cat Studio

Oct 25

Fade Survival - Update 0.0.4.0

Fade Survival - Too Zooted

🚁 New Features

🚁 Helicopters

Explore the world from above with the first generation of flyable helicopters. Scout, travel, or move loot between bases faster than ever—but watch your fuel, altitude, and landing zones.

🏠 Garages

Buildable garage door frames and garage doors are now available, allowing you to park and secure vehicles inside your base. Designed to fit a 2x2 footprint, garages keep your rides safe from looters and the elements.

📦 Vehicle Storage Modules

Attach modular storage units directly to your vehicles and turn them into mobile loot haulers or nomad rigs.

💥 Turrets

Automated defenses are online. Power them up and lock down your base from raiders, wildlife, or anyone else wandering the wasteland.

🏹 Bow & Arrows

Silent and deadly. Perfect for hunting wolves, fending off survivors, or taking out targets without alerting the whole area.

🐺 Wolves

Wolves now roam the wasteland as solitary predators. Hunt them for resources—or be ready to fight for your life.
(Future updates will expand wolf behavior, adding packs and more dynamic AI interactions.)

⚙️ Gameplay Additions

🎯 Hitmarkers – Red for headshots, white for body hits.
🎡 Spinning Wheel – Craft backpacks and essential survival gear.
🔁 Recyclers – Now active at gas stations for breaking down junk into usable materials.
🛢️ Fuel Distillery – Found at the airbase and underground tunnels, convert crude into usable fuel.
💰 Gold Vault – Mint your own gold coins once you clear the AI guarding it (bring your own bars).
🪜 Elevator System – Elevators and call posts now allow full access to the underground tunnel network.
🛡️ Safezone Notifier – HUD shows when you’re in a safe zone.
🧱 Base Decay Update – Upkeep now ticks every 6 hours instead of hourly.
💣 Base Raiding Changes – Build parts no longer take bullet damage; explosives are now the primary method for forced entry.
🌊 Underground Fixes – Water exclusion zones no longer force weapon unequip.
🔧 Airdrops Fixed (hopefully).
🚧 Fence Fixes – Most fences are no longer bulletproof.

🧠 Performance & Bug Fixes

Fixed body looting—players can now properly search and loot downed survivors.
Improved vehicle handling, synchronization, and network smoothing for multiplayer.
Optimized replication and server updates to reduce jitter.
Adjusted Plot Pole range and shape (now a box) for better base coverage and corner placement.
General stability, replication, and server-side optimizations across multiple systems.
Slew of bug fixes throughout the world.

🔮 What’s Next

We’re laying the foundation for deeper sandbox gameplay. Upcoming updates will include:

Advanced base-building and fortification systems
New vehicle classes and modular attachments
Dynamic AI encounters and world-driven events
Further network and performance refinements

⚙️ Final Words

From the ground to the sky—and even below it—Fade Survival keeps evolving.
Whether you fly, fight, or hide, every choice shapes your story in the wasteland.

Take to the skies. Fortify your ground. Survive the fade.

Oct 25

Cold Take #34 - Build a Navy

Zero-K - GoogleFrog

This is a guest post by Aquanim, who led the 2016 sea rework.

Over two thirds of our own planet is covered by oceans. Therefore, strategy games which are played on planetary landscapes have some reason to consider how to handle bodies of water. The simplest approach is to treat water bodies as an impassable barrier to land units and leave it at that. In games where units can interact with water, often this is reserved for a special class of ship-type units, but beyond this distinction “water” is just another terrain type.

The physics-driven mechanics of Zero-K require us to give some deeper thought to how units ought to behave on and around water. This goes all the way down to fundamentals like “where is the water”, “where can units go”, “when can units see each other”, and “how do units fight each other”. We can dispose of the first point quickly: the sea level is defined by the engine to be altitude zero, so unfortunately we can’t have fancy waterfalls or scenic mountain lakes.

On land, all units (which are not flying, jumping or thrown) are standing on the ground. That ground might be flat, precipitous or anything in between. In water, on the other hand, there are four places a unit might plausibly be:

Hovering above the water surface
On the water surface
Floating beneath the surface
On the seafloor

This is already getting rather complicated, so Zero-K immediately cuts down on this list by drawing no distinction between the first two states. The main consequence of this choice is that Hovercraft are vulnerable to torpedoes and similar weapons. Hovercrafts, surface ships, and surfaced amphbots behave similarly to units on land - with the significant difference that all water bodies are flat. This limits the potential range of unit interactions and map design, and gives an edge to direct-fire units like Lance since there is no terrain to hide behind.

In principle, a submarine-type unit which floats underwater could move in three dimensions, ascending to the surface or descending to its depth limit. Again, that sounds rather complicated, and we do not want the player to be fighting a two-dimensional interface to unambiguously order three-dimensional movement. Therefore, we assume that submarines travel at a fixed depth beneath the surface, unless forced to surface in shallow water. At the time of writing this is the rarest mode of movement in Zero-K, shared only by the Seawolf and Scylla.

A wider range of units (broadly termed amphibious) can walk on the seabed: Commanders, all of the Amphbots, a few utility units, and a couple of Striders. Depending on the size of the unit and the water depth, an amphibious unit may be partially above water. In fact, some amph units are capable of floating to the surface on their own. This enables their surface-only weapons to be used, but prevents further (voluntary) horizontal movement until they return to the sea floor. We tolerate this complication since a large variety of underwater-combat-only units would pose greater design problems, which we'll discuss a little later. In general these units want to float if and only if they are attacking, so the interface-battling is not too bad.

All amphibious units are bots, not vehicles or spiders, so they can climb moderate slopes but not cliffs. Managing where units are allowed to travel underwater sounds rather annoying, so again we simplify the situation by avoiding the vehicle movement type and playing on maps without underwater cliffs. This is still the most troublesome of our three water-based movement types since water depth can have a significant effect on combat - in particular, it determines the time which an amphibious unit requires to float to the surface and start shooting back.

Verisimilitude demands that units under the water are more difficult to see than those on the surface. However, just like the ordinary fog-of-war mechanics deviate from `realistic’ line-of-sight for the purposes of gameplay, we simplify seeing underwater to a single mechanic, sonar. An enemy underwater unit is visible to us if and only if it is within the sonar radius of a friendly unit. To make things even simpler, in modern Zero-K all ‘sea units’ have sonar radius equal to their vision radius, while most other units do not (notably the Owl scout plane has limited sonar capability).

Underwater units are still stealthier than surface units, since they don’t show up on long-range radar and cannot be detected by non-combat buildings like metal extractors. They are not as hidden as cloaked units, which seems reasonable since cloaked units are less common and normally pay a cost in terms of energy or immobility. As previously mentioned, units underwater cannot be cloaked, since the decloak radius mechanic would not play nicely with variable water depths.

Besides the gameplay mechanics associated with vision, sea maps also pose a visual clarity problem to the player. Between the tint of the sea, surface ripples and reflections, units operating at several different depths, and typically less informative terrain textures, it is often more difficult to tell exactly what is going on underwater. This is part of the reason why underwater combat in Zero-K has few weapon types, and those that exist do not strongly reward quick reactions and micromanagement.

A second constraint on the weapons which are usable by and against underwater units is that the game mechanics must remain reasonable for a fairly wide range of water depths. Imagine, for example, a surface unit with an unguided torpedo with similar mechanics to the Ronin’s missile, firing at a group of Ducks on the sea floor. In shallow water the path of the torpedo traces a straight line lengthways through the Ducks, and is likely to hit one. In deep water the torpedo will instead have only a brief window where it is at an appropriate depth to hit the Ducks before it impacts the ground. This all sounds rather messy, so we have given all underwater-capable weapons tracking or other projectile properties which avoid this discrepancy.

From the perspective of balance rather than design, there is yet another constraint on underwater-capable weapons: if the longest-range conventional underwater-targeting weapon is itself attached to an underwater unit, then there is a lot of danger that these units will become dominant in the sea meta, since if they can be protected against swarms there is little else which can outscale them. Addressing this by expanding the surface-vs-underwater game with a wide range of units and capabilities is a superficially interesting idea, but has two big drawbacks. First, as we have already discussed, the potential variety in sensible underwater-capable weapons is rather limited. Second, while surface units can directly interact with land units and vice versa in interesting ways, it seems much more difficult to have land units and underwater units interact well.

Therefore, in Zero-K we have gone in the direction of reducing underwater interactions to the minimum feasible set - of the units below strider class, only the light submarine and a few Amphbots can fight underwater, and all of their weapons have short ranges. The old Serpent long-range sniper submarine is one of the very few units to have been outright removed from Zero-K in the last decade (we’ll get to the second one later), and Scallop’s skirmisher-range torpedoes were reduced to riot range (though this was by no means the end of Scallop’s career as a game-warping balance headache…)

Since very few land-based assets can interact with submerged units, it would be quite unfair for underwater units to engage land units freely without fear of retaliation. Therefore, the only unit with a weapon designed for underwater-to-land combat is the Scylla tactical missile submarine, which pays a metal cost for each missile and hence does not engage ‘freely’.

We conclude with a lightning round covering other interesting aspects of Zero-K’s sea design.

Economy: The core principles of Zero-K’s economy remain the same on water maps, but there are some differences which alter the typical play patterns (adding some desirable variety). Arguably the most important is an indirect consequence of where units can move. The wrecks of destroyed units fall to the seafloor, where they are much less prone to being trampled or reduced by stray weapon fire. Therefore, metal reclaim is often a major factor in prolonged sea battles. Since wind generators perform poorly at sea level they are replaced with tidal generators, which combine the efficiency of wind generators with the reliability and robustness of solar collectors. Singularity Reactors cannot be built underwater, though one can terraform a land platform on which to place them. This is motivated by similar reasons as the decision to prevent cloaking of structures in general, and gives Fusion Reactors a point of difference.

Factory balance: Across the land-based factories there is a (tenuous) principle that each factory should be similarly powerful and competitive with each other in a 1v1 on a suitable map. We don’t hold to the same rule in sea battles for two reasons. First, it would be boring to do the same thing twice. Second, since they are unable to travel on land, Ships have less freedom of movement than the hybrid Hover and Amph factories, which makes a difference even on maps which only have small islands. Therefore, our (tenuous) goal is for the Ship units to be a bit overtuned, but the Hover, Amphbot and air factories should still provide useful tools.

Landships: Okay, I lied. Ships can go on land… sort of. Lobsters, air transports, or terraforming can put a ship on land, and while the ship can’t move around without assistance it can still fight. The Envoy and Shogun artillery ships make the best use of this, since their long range mitigates mobility problems and their ballistic weapons benefit from higher elevation.

Transports: Unlike almost every other game with a dedicated class of “ship” units, Zero-K does not have a conventional transport for land units across bodies of water. The Surfboard used to fill this role, but it did not have much purpose when compared with the Djinn teleporter and Charon air transport, and was eventually consigned to the ship graveyard alongside the Serpent.

Spicy water: Some maps replace water with acid, lava, or void. On these maps Zero-K behaves much more like the “water is an impassable barrier” games we mentioned at the start, although some acid is weak enough that units can survive in it for a while. These maps are not affected by most of the issues described in this post, but they do offer some novel tactical opportunities of their own…

Come back in a few weeks for Cold Take #35, in which we will stop building a navy.

Index of Cold Takes

Oct 25

v0.16 "Melon Pan" released with new collectible!

Konbini's World - gachipan

New Collectible: Melon Pan

A new collectible is available for purchase now at Benri Konbini! You must first unlock the Benri Konbini convenience store located at the top right of the map and then you will be able to buy the new Melon Pan and add it to your collection.

Melon Pan / melonpan / メロンパン (melon bread) is a Japanese desert baked good known for its unique texture and sometimes being melon flavored. If there's another food item that you think should be collectible in the game please comment your suggestions!

Changes based on your feedback (Thank You!)

Added restock all button to vending machine management. Once you have unlocked all vending machine powerups and inventory types a new button that says "Restock All" will shown up in the inventory view. You can press the button or press and hold the button to restock every drink at once.
Allow pressing and holding the fund strand building button. This means that you can now unlock buildings like the Arcade by pressing and holding the fund button instead of having to press it over and over again.
Show input help message at startup (WASD for keyboard players and joystick directions for controller player).

Other improvements:

Fixed powerup unlocking bug in vending machine management where buying more inventory space wouldn't work if you unlocked the hot items powerup first
New collection progress bar that looks nicer
Improved text display in collection viewer
Player's home computer now tells you which strand buildings are locked
New textures for Taiyaki and Pudding collectibles

Please keep the feedback coming! Thank you for playing and have fun!

Oct 25

Frogfish & Romanian Localization!

Operation Octo - bboz

Welcome to the first content update for OO!

Romanian Localization

OO has been translated into Romanian by Silviu Offtopic - The creator of PvZ Romania!

I gave Silviu a lot of creative liberty with the translations, so this Romanian localization is a heck of an expansion to the OO lore ;)
(Yes, whatever Silviu wrote is to be considered canon)

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New Gadget - Frogfish

Tired of always bringing a collector to every battle? Wanna free up that 6th turret slot for something else?
Well, good news: Frogfish is here to end Pleco's career for good!

Frogfish is both a collector AND a pearl producer!
What's more? He is a free gadget that does not occupy any space in your deck!

Frogfish uses his tongue to collect pickups across a massive area, as long as he has direct line of sight.

If you manage to dodge his tongue so that the pearls get reeled back into Frogfish's mouth, Frogfish will duplicate some of those pearls!

(Producing about 33% of the added values between 4 of the pearls - Give Frogfish large pearls to make more profit!)

Frogfish unlocks after Level 2-4 inside Toxic Wasteland - Try him out now!

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New Achievements

I just added 7 new achievements to the game!
(They're mostly gadget-related)

If you encounter any bugs while playing, please report them to me on Discord!

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Balance Changes

Hammer Shark no longer spawns large pearls

This is to reduce the synergy between the already OP Hammer Shark and Frogfish, so that Hammer Shark is not an easy guarantee of Frogfish's max yield.

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Bug Fixes

Fixed a glitch where Shooting Star does not provide light inside Graveyard, until the simulation begins

Reported by Eevee

Fixed a glitch where if Odin dies inside the Graveyard without having started a combat simulation, the "return to menu" button would not work

Reported by IdiotWithATophat

Fixed a glitch where Pleco-llector collects the farthest pearl instead of the closest, when multiple pearls are inside Clams
Fixed a glitch where Hollow Death Ray's charge only increases by one increment when multiple turrets got knocked-out at the same time
Fixed a glitch in Level 3-10 where during the intermission dialogues, Dr. Finn's vocal SFX does not play, while Dr. Finn's camera also does not pan
Fixed a glitch in Level 3-10 where Leviathan's first battery depletion occurs prematurely
Fixed a glitch where completing Level 3-10 would erroneously give the map a notification dot
Fixed a glitch where if a battery is given to Leviathan while it is knocked-out, Leviathan maintains its "disabled" black tint after waking up
Fixed a glitch where Leviathan does not get knocked-out, and can get stuck inside the graveyard

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Misc Changes

"Octopus Regeneration" achievement can no longer be unlocked after level victory

This is to prevent projectmoonbrainrot's strat of cheating this achievement by damaging Odin after a level has ended, then waiting for the full regen

Adjusted Purple Turret Pod drop-rates

There has been a lot of reports of people only getting Turret Clam pod drops, and few to no regular Clam pod drops, even though Turret Clams are supposed to be a rare drop. I myself have gotten 6 Turret Clams vs. only 1 regular Clam in my graveyard. Thing is, my RNG's logic seemed flawless. I opted to adjust the drop-rates - Extensive testings seem to prove a more "normal" distribution of purple turret drops now.

Leviathan can no longer receive batteries that are at one-bar charge
The stun VFX now shows over Leviathan's head