Thanks for all the demo love! Today’s small QoL patch focuses on smoother play and less friction.

-3 touch rule implemented

-Pause screen polished + updated

-Gameplay rebalances here and there

-Quit button

-Serve camera

I'm interested to hear if any of you guys have beaten the demo yet :)

Added, More quality settings

This build is a candidate for a hotfix.

If you encounter issues with this update, please post in the SteamVR Bug Report forum. If possible, please include a system report. Replies to this post are not tracked for bug reporting purposes. Please use the forum linked above to report issues.

You can opt-in to the beta version of the Meta Quest Steam Link app here. The Steam Link for Meta Quest FAQ page is available here.

Anyone can opt into the SteamVR Beta. Instructions are available here.

SteamVR:

• Fix an issue where a third party driver disabled SteamVR's crash detection. This led to generic messages like "A critical part of SteamVR has stopped working" and a lack of recovery options. If you were affected by this, you may now end up in safe mode after upgrading. We strongly recommend updating any driver which is disabled by safe mode, in case they have a version compatibility issue. If the problem persists, enable drivers one by one to find the problem driver. Leave any drivers you don't need disabled.

• Fixed bug causing HTC Cosmos / Focus / XR Elite users to not have tracking playing HL: Alyx

Ancient TD v1.4.69:

• Added new enemies to spawn list.

• Rebalanced Gameplay.

• Rebalanced Runes.

-UI overhaul
-added additional map nodes based on road branching logic
-Qingliu Xue and Wuhen Dan base stats adjustments
-no longer gain stats selection when leveling up, reverted back to gain/upgrade cultivation methods
-removed methods from shop and combat rewards, Seclude no longer have option for method upgrade
-leveling up to certain cultivation stages gives specific stat rewards:
Body Foundation: Max HP + 15%
Core Formation: Max Spirit + 1
Nascent Soul: Technique damage dealt + 20%
Soul Transformation：Max HP + 30%
Void Refinement: Max Spirit + 1
Body Integration: Spell block gain + 25%
Great Ascension: Max HP + 45%
Tribulation Crossing: Max Spirit + 1
Xian: After Tribulation, gain Basic Stats based on Aptitude
-Aptitude adjusted to each point + 5% EXP bonus, 1x EXP break through Aptitude +1, 1.5x Aptitude +2, 2x Aptitude +3
-Spirit Reversion no longer provides Spirit
-Tidal Slash Rarity changed to rare
-Enlightenment Rarity changed to uncommon
-Monster HP scaling per level changed to x1.75 from 1.5
-Monster stats scaling per level changed from 1.5 to 1.3

(More contents working in progress, please stay tuned！)

Hello Chefs! 🍣

We’ve just rolled out a small patch to address some pesky issues that were getting in the way of your perfect sushi-making experience. Here’s what’s been fixed:

• Kitchen Scene Issue: Fixed a bug where grabbing ingredients not part of the current nigiri recipe caused the player to lose interaction with all objects in the scene, forcing a restart from the main menu.

• Kuroneko Appearance: Resolved an issue where the humanoid Kuroneko character was not properly showing up in the restaurant.

• Plating Behavior: Fixed a bug where Kuroneko, as the plating character, could not respond to sushi placements.

• Wardrobe Animation: Corrected an issue where Kuroneko lost her animations in the Wardrobe UI.

Thank you for reporting these bugs and helping us improve the experience! More updates and content are on the way, so stay tuned!

Great news for better comms for players.
Info about lobby created on two discord channels Matchmaking and Matchmaking-ChessMode.
Some small fixes for tests.

• Value Adjustment: Ants can now pick up ant glue.
  
• Guide: A reminder will be displayed when the reception desk is blocked.
  
• Optimization: Farmers should avoid accepting mushroom box quests before completing their own quests to avoid delaying their farming season.
  
• Optimization: Added hand gestures.
  
• Value Adjustment: Treasury capacity increased to 10 million.
  
• Value Adjustment: Metal floors are now immune to artillery fire.

1. Reworked Currency. Coins are now DNA strings. Upgrade DNA, and Life DNA.

2. New voice lines for pickups.

3. Iteration 1 of the intro sequence. Let me know if the intro sequence gives you any problems, I had a real fight getting this to work

4. If you press back out of the start screen, a pop-up will now ask you if you are sure you want to quit the game.

Have a nice day! 🙂

Hey everyone! This is the first entry in my devlog. I'll just start by talking about the current state of things, even though I've already done quite a bit of work, the results of which you can see in this video:

 

That's not so bad, because before getting to all the fun game content, I decided to tackle the most boring stuff first. So I've already got these systems ready:

• A save system

• Graphics, sound, and control settings

• A localization system (yep, which is why all the text looks like technical gibberish right now 😂)

• An inventory and item pickup system (even a simple shooter needs a place to store ammo and weapons, right?)

  

All of this, and other things, were built with the help of AI — mostly Gemini Pro and ChatGPT 4o. By the way, I'm currently testing ChatGPT 5, and I'm a bit skeptical. Either it's not quite there, or I just haven't figured out how to use it properly yet.

On the other hand, ChatGPT 5 did help me make a new type of monster for the game — a flying skull.

Flying skulls are an amazing enemy. You've probably seen them in many games, and I decided not to reinvent the wheel, but to make something that just works. At one point, I had a room with a toxic pool in it. I know I have no experience in level design, but I still try to keep some logic and consistency between different entities. I wanted to add flying skulls, and I thought the pool room was the perfect place to introduce this new type of enemy. Why?

• The room is big enough for the skulls to fly around freely and chase the player.

• A keycard will be in this room, so I can lock the player in and give them a small fight.

• The toxic pool is the perfect respawn point for the flying heads — it explains why the heads are skulls, why they're toxic, and why they explode on contact with the player, dealing toxic damage.

The skulls' behavior works like this: they spawn, patrol the area flying back and forth in search of the player. As soon as they see the player, they immediately give chase, and if they catch up, they explode, dealing nasty damage. The logic sounds simple, but it turned out to be more complicated than I thought:

• It's important for them to patrol a specific space on a random route without flying out of it, while also taking the geometry of that space into account — the floor, ceiling, walls, and other objects.

• They need to know the player's position relative to the skull to switch sprites in time, which determines the angle at which the player sees the monster.

• Once they catch sight of the player, they need to initiate a chase, again, considering the level's geometry — the player might run into a narrow corridor with a low ceiling.

• In any confusing situation, like completely losing sight of the player, they need to be able to give up the chase and return to patrol mode.

• Finally, when they get close enough, they need to activate a timer and detonate, possibly blowing up other enemies within the blast radius.

The code for all the logic described above was created mostly with the help of ChatGPT 5 Thinking. This new OpenAI model sometimes tends to overcomplicate things, but it also occasionally throws in unasked-for ideas... and sometimes they're not bad. For example, while writing the code, the AI suggested I change the color of the enemy's sprite when it gets closer to the player to emphasize that something (an explosion) is about to happen — I kept that idea. But I caught and removed the programmatic sound effect it tried to embed in the code; I worry about my users' ears 🙂

As for the graphics, I used the following workflow, which took into account the need for animated 2D skull sprites from different angles:

• In ChatGPT (you can use anything else, but I started with this one to maintain a consistent style, so I use it for concept art generation) I generated a frontal view of a toxic skull.

• I then dropped this skull into Midjourney (for those who don't know, it can already generate videos with looping and from a first frame) and, using a prompt, asked it to rotate the skull 360 degrees

  

• Next, from that video, I took screenshots of the side and back views and dropped them back into Midjourney to generate the movement and attack animations.

• I had to use VEO3 for the explosion animation because it's the only one capable of confidently blowing heads up 🤯🙂 I also used the same AI for generating the sounds.

This way, I get the enemy animation without any distortion. The most important thing is to remember to tell the AIs to do everything on the right chromakey background so you can cut the sprites out later. The background color, of course, depends on the enemy's color palette.

As I said, the flying skulls emerge from a toxic pool. But where did the pool itself come from? The whole game takes place on a space station, and its first chapter's levels are laboratories and a research center. I won't go into details now — I'll talk about the setting and other things separately later — but within the context of the labs, I came up with a number of rooms that they should contain. That's how I got the idea for a large room with a pool of toxic liquid needed for cloning.

I build the geometry in the level editor myself, starting with just an empty room to get a sense of its volume.

Then, I fly the camera into a corner, take a screenshot, feed it to ChatGPT, and ask it to fill the room 1-to-1 in the setting of my game, taking the room's purpose (which I describe additionally) into account. That's how the concept art came to be.

Then, based on that concept art, I first create the necessary 2D and then 3D objects that I use to fill the previously empty space. At the moment, it's not finished yet — I need to add more details, like pipes with liquid flowing out of them. After all, how else did the liquid get into the pool? 🙂

The glowing liquid itself is a separate marvel.

The shaders and particle effects were all put together under Gemini's careful guidance. Honestly, I didn't even expect it to turn out so well (well, in my opinion, maybe because my expectations for AIs were lower). I hope that when I get around to the liquid flowing from the pipes, it'll be just as good.

Doors are what I'm working on right now. The game already has doors that open with a control panel, and these panels can react to monsters in the room and keep the player from leaving. It sounds simple, but when it comes to AI and especially modeling, there are some nuances and tricks involved. I'll talk about them in the next devlog, but for now, let me show you a couple of door concepts that will open exclusively with keycards...

...yellow...

...and purple

If you are as interested in this project as I am, please add Crimson System: Protocol VɅΔ to your Steam wishlist. It would help me a lot and ensure you don't miss future updates and the final release!

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Thank you so much for the support! Stay happy, everyone