fix bugs related to Ted

Hello, Duelists!

Today, the 10th of August, officially marks 7 years of development on Duels of Fortune! More time than any sane people should be spending on a single project, if we're being honest... but it's been time well-spent. And that's all thanks to you guys, our wonderful community who keep us going!

For our 7th dev anniversary, we wanted to do something to give back to the community that's carried us all this way. And so, it's our pleasure to announce the first ever...



That's right! We want to see your most creative, wacky, and stylish ideas for new costumes, and our favourite ones will get the opportunity to be added to the game officially! Whether you've had cool concepts floating around in your head for ages, you're only thinking of some now, or you just want an excuse to dress up your favourite character in a silly outfit, this is your time to shine!!

Each participant can submit up to 3 different costume designs, as long as each design is for a different character. Once submissions close, we will choose 3-5 winners, depending on how many submissions we get. Note that we will not select multiple designs created by the same person.

The contest starts RIGHT NOW, and will last until September 10th! We hope one month will be enough time to ensure everyone who wants to submit a design is able to do so!

Once you have a design ready, you can submit it through THIS GOOGLE FORM! You're free to also share your designs on Discord or social media if you wish, but if you don't submit to the form, your submission will not be counted!!

PLEASE READ THE RULES CAREFULLY BEFORE CREATING! Submissions that break the rules will be discarded!

• MAIN PLAYABLE CHARACTERS ONLY - You may only submit costumes for any fighter on the main playable roster (including the guests!). We are not allowing submissions for costume-only characters (i.e. Roy, Ricky Travis, Shoto Goto, etc.) or boss-only characters (i.e. Masked Oni, Shade, Donner, etc.).
  
• NO MATURE/18+ ELEMENTS -- This includes (but is not limited to): partial or full nudity, sexual suggestion, gore, and illicit drugs. Basically, just don’t submit anything NSFW or that we would otherwise normally avoid.
  
• A VISUAL REFERENCE MUST BE PROVIDED -- This can take the form of a sketch, digital artwork, 3D render, or whatever other visual art form you're comfortable with! A description by itself is just not enough for us to go on, so even if you don’t consider yourself an artist, just do the best you can! Alternatively, consider collaborating with someone to help you with the art if you're not able to convey your idea on your own (see the later rule on collaboration for more info). Submissions containing AI-generated artwork will not be accepted under any circumstances.
  
• MAXIMUM OF 3 SUBMISSIONS PER PERSON -- A single participant may submit up to 3 individual designs if they desire. HOWEVER, you may not submit multiple costumes for the same character. We will also not be choosing multiple winning designs made by the same person, as that would be unfair to other participants.
  
• COLLABORATION IS ALLOWED -- You are allowed to collaborate with others to create a design together, so long as all contributors are credited by name. Also keep in mind that, for group submissions, each contributor will be counted separately towards the 3-costumes-per-person rule (i.e. if you submit 2 costumes on your own and 1 with a team, you will be considered to have submitted 3 costumes and cannot submit another).
  
• NO CHARACTER REPACEMENTS -- You may not submit a costume that completely replaces the base character with a different one (i.e. costumes like Shin, Roy, Evilobster, etc.). Please also avoid submitting costumes that are just the character wearing another character's/your OC's outfit.
  
• NO OUTSIDE REFERENCES/CROSSOVERS -- Costumes may not be directly based on, or be extremely obvious references to, any existing intellectual properties outside of Duels of Fortune. In the case of the guest characters, making costumes inspired by their home games is A-OK!
  
• WE HAVE THE FINAL SAY ON WHAT GOES IN OUR GAME -- We reserve the right to tweak or modify the designs of any winning costumes if we so choose.

These are not hard and fast rules, but are some rough guidelines we ourselves use when designing costumes. We may be more likely to select costumes that follow these guidelines.

• Avoid submitting a costume that is too similar to an existing one. To help with this, we have provided a handy reference sheet of all the costumes currently in the game, which you can view HERE!
  
• Consider a character’s personality and aesthetic when designing a costume for them. Costumes that “fit” a character in that way tend to feel much more natural and believable. Be creative in your approach of course, but try to avoid, for instance, giving a silly character like Derrick a particularly dark or edgy costume.
  
• Avoid designs that drastically expand a part of a character’s base shape (such as adding a bulky accessory or large headwear to a character that doesn’t already have one). These can cause noticeable clipping issues during animations as well as make the bounds of a character’s hurtbox less clear.
  
• Try to keep in mind a character’s animations and general structure. Avoid adding capes or other flowy elements that would require new animation to be done on them. If an item or piece of clothing is an essential part of a character’s animations (such as Sylvan’s hat), try to ensure your costume has an equivalent.
  
• Avoid overly detailed designs. Duels of Fortune's art style is relatively simple, so too much detail in a design may stand out in a bad way.
  
• Consider including supporting characters. If a character has any supporting characters in their moveset (such as Shiverskull’s crew, Chip, or Gizmo), try to think of designs for them to supplement the main costume. These extra characters do not have to be included in your visual reference, but we would still appreciate a description of how they should look at minimum.

We have also provided turnaround model sheets for every eligible character, which can be viewed and downloaded HERE. You are free to use these as references for your artwork if you wish. And while we would encourage you to create an original artwork as your final submission piece, using these model sheets as a base to draw on top of may be helpful for getting your design down, especially if you have limited artistic experience.

Now that you understand everything, feel free to get creating! We can't wait to see what you all come up with!

Quick Bug Fix

The demo is finally here.
I’m sorry for the delay, and I appreciate your patience.

The demo for The Golden Light Guardian is now available.
I hope you’ll give it a try and share your thoughts — your feedback will help me improve and finish the game.

My wish is to make a game people can enjoy playing, just as I’ve enjoyed playing so many games.

If you’d like to be more involved in shaping the game, you can:

• Search The Golden Light Guardian Kickstarter to back the project

Help me make a better game.

Thanks for playing.

- Fixed an issue where fertilizer could be placed on no-soil tiles
- Fixed an issue where Magnet Miners on Volaris would cause lag and possible crash the game

Minor update to level design

Hi everyone!

It's that time of the week again, and as promised last week, we'll be looking deeper into the story elements, collectibles and Duds.

If there are any other things you want to know more about, let me know in the comments!

Before we'll look into the three promised topics, I figured it's a good time to talk about the current state of the game.

The game, as mentioned last week, has three scenes ready to play. There are some finishing touches being implemented in terms of timing, collectibles and powerups.

These are required to make the gameplay as clean as possible, and as tight as possible. While Boll's Journey is mostly a casual top-down game, it doesn't mean that it can't have some action, strategy and timing in it.

The expectation is to be done with the finishing touches somewhere next week, meaning the game will be ready for Early Access somewhere in the coming weeks. I'll be posting a separate post with a one week mark when it's time, so wishlist now to keep updated.

Also, a quick note on energy: while there's no on screen gauge (like a number or a health bar of some kind) you still will be able to visually see where you are on your energy: the less energy you have available to you, the smaller Boll will be.

Duds are probably going to be the most annoying enemy the game has to offer, but they're also the most interesting to talk about. You won't know the difference between a Dud and a Shape just by looking at it. Any Shape you see could be a Dud - although most won't be.

What exactly is a Dud, though? A Dud is a Shape that when fired upon, won't die. Instead, it will start cycling through all of it's colors in an infinite loop. The fact that you won't be able to see the difference between a Dud and a Shape is what makes them an annoying enemy: you think you'll be able to move on, but you can't.

-- A Dud compared to a regular Shape

A Dud works in a similar way as a Shape when it comes to energy, in that when you hit it, you lose energy. The difference comes in the form of how much energy you lose. A Dud will take as much energy as the power it has. (Example: You encounter a Black Sphere, it turns out to be a Dud, you'll lose 9 energy)

Doing the finishing touches meant having to get ready some collectibles as well. They are scattered across all scenes, some more obvious than others. As you'll play, you'll be reminded to keep your eye out on the collectibles.

Below you can find a handful of prepared collectibles and in their natural habitat (obviously zoomed in so much that you won't really know where it is until you actually see it steamhappy)

-- A few Baybayin Symbols in their natural habitat

This batch of collectibles comes from the Baybayin script. A script that was widely used in the 16th and 17th centuries on the islands of Luzon - which is part of the Philippines. It was used to write Tagalog and Visayan languages.

For the purpose of the game, I've picked a special modernization of the script to base my symbols on, to be able to get a full alphabet.

What the symbols will be used for in the game, and how you'll use them, is a secret for now, the only thing I will tell you, is to keep your eye out for them, as you'll need to collect a certain amount of symbols.

In a way, the story part of the game is also a collectible - you'll be able to find a whole story written out in the collectibles tab in the pause menu (after getting far enough). This story somewhat follows the story you're seeing on the screen as you go.

You'll find out, when you get to play the game, that there are currently three voices:

• A guiding voice - the voice you're starting out with when the game starts.

  

• An angry voice - the voice in the grayish dimension

  

• A friendly voice - the voice in the transparent dimension

  

So far, without any sounds in the game, it may be a bit confusing to know what is what, but you'll notice that there's a subtle tint to the subtitles for each of the dimensions. Eventually, when sounds do get added, the intention is to make it more obvious to know which is which, as I intend to get some voice over work done in the future, to make the game a bit more lively.

For now, this is all I'm willing to say about the story, as I believe it is more fun to find it all out yourself.

Next week, I'll be talking about a few other types of enemies, as well as a bit more about the scenes mentioned last week with the addition of the Forest. I'll also be talking about the Powerups and the system behind it.

Maybe somewhere during the week I'll be able to drop an update on the Early Access release for Boll's Journey, so: Wishlist the game if you want to be the first to know about it!

Stay tuned for more and if you haven't already, go over to the Steam page for Boll's Journey and hit that wishlist button to get all the latest!

• Balancing: Final boss 1 mechanic drastically changed, now has phase-dependent invincibility instead of damage reflect
  
• Balancing: Final boss 2 HP reduced by about 10%
  
• Balancing: Pinball side job 2 defense slightly easier with less enemies
  
• QoL: Job-giving NPCs now have exactly positioned markers on the map while job is ready or done
  
• QoL: Active quest markers on the map now have a circular animation to clarify that they only mark the room but do not show the exact position
  
• QoL: Therematron shield direction improved, with gamepad keeps facing the last firing direction for a couple of seconds, with mouse and keyboard always faces mouse cursor
  
• QoL: Barriers in Pinball racing room are now open if the quest is not active, though there is nothing of interest in that room
  
• Bugfix: Removed needless and faulty barrier in Computer Space Bar in front of the teleporter leading to the last port station
  
• Bugfix: Fixed erroneous triggering of a cutscene when entering Top Level Management in Tek Tek Inc
  
• Bugfix: Chiptune module no longer has an initial firing delay when switching to it during gameplay
  
• Text: Computer side job 3 dialog text gives a hint to the riddle number

• Fixed radio stations replaying the same song/clips every time you enter a town.
  
• Fixed Steam Achievements not working again... :)

In the new update, a small change has been made to the trucks in Escape and a better weapon sound has been added.

Have fun, your RGE