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Offline Asid

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Re: Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
« Reply #15 on: January 16, 2018, 08:03:44 PM »
Dev Diary: Health and Healing
4 JANUARY   - SUNCRASH


Good day survivors. The holiday season is beyond us and everyone is back to work, busy working on the on the next update for Judgement, and ultimately the final version of the game.

This article is the first in a new segment of developer diaries, where we hope to give you insight into upcoming features, changes, and mechanics. Each time we will try to explain our design process and decision making, and we are looking forward to reading your feedback.

Today, I'm going to talk about survivor health and healing.

Want to stay up to date? Subscribe for updates[suncrash.us11.list-manage.com]
You can also follow us on Facebook or join our Discord[discord.gg].



History of Healing in Judgment

In the past, an injured task force without any decent source of healing was forced to return to the camp for healing. This is not necessarily bad – going back to the camp after every few missions to replenish and recover sounds good, but doing so after every serious battle is bothersome. So, we introduced some more field healing options and capped how many times they can be used per combat, to make sure they can’t be exploited. The result was that players would ‘farm’ biomes by going into them, healing, and leaving. This became an even bigger issue as we introduced more and more non-consumable healing abilities, such as the Physician skill and the Holy Armor heal ability.

We had to stop that exploit, and did so by introducing a limit – you can’t heal yourself for more HP than you had when the battle started. This, however, had the misfortune of being unintuitive and not at all transparent and caused a lot of frustration and confusion. We also knew we wanted healing abilities to be more powerful, less mundane and more important. So, we went back to the drawing board and came up with the concept of permanent versus temporary damage.

Upcoming Changes

As of the upcoming Update 15, during combat, survivors will suffer damage and use healing as in previous versions, however, now most of the damage they suffer will be temporary damage. Temporary damage can be healed by combat abilities and is automatically restored at the end of every battle.

A small percent of the damage, however, will be permanent damage. Permanent damage will not be restored during combat, and will not be automatically healed after combat. Instead, it can only be recovered by rest or by using medicine at the infirmary.



As you can see, the health bars are modified to show temporary and permanent damage separately. This system has the advantage of being immediately clear and intuitive but also opens the door for more strategic depth. Some possibilities include unique rituals that quickly recover permanent damage and dangerous enemies that do more lasting harm.

Finally, players can send their task forces deep into enemy territory and be able to enjoy several missions before they must turn back since most of the damage will be healed between battles.

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Offline Asid

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Re: Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
« Reply #16 on: January 16, 2018, 08:05:51 PM »
Update 15 in beta branch
11 JANUARY   - SUNCRASH

Update: see patch info here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/455980/discussions/0/3277925755433304391/

Original post

Greetings survivors! Come around the campfire, we have important news.

We have just released Update 15 to the Beta Branch. Update 15 is a significant milestone for us: it is not only the first major update of 2018, it’s also part of our drive to polish the game and our mechanics towards final release. Update 15 contains a lot of additions and balancing, mostly based on community feedback.

As usual, we are counting on you, the community, to help us test Update 15, so we can bring it to the larger public as soon as possible.

The full patch notes of Update 15 will be published when the update is released on the main branch, but we want to give the highlights of what you will see if you update to the beta branch.

Reminder: To play on the beta branch, right click the game in the steam client, select properties, and then select "beta" from the betas tab.

Want to stay up to date? Subscribe for updates[subscribe.suncrash.com]
You can also follow us on Facebook or join our Discord[discord.gg].

Note: We have not received the German and Chinese translations for the new features yet, so some parts will appear in English. We'll add those before the main branch release.

The Store is Open

A host of changes and improvements to traders, which will now offer the players more exotic items, including training manuals that will grant unique skills, special equipment and even XP boosts. A new algorithm will ensure the traders will offer more useful items according to the current situation of the colony.



Temporary Damage

Survivors will now suffer temporary and lasting damage during battles. All temporary damage will be healed automatically after each fight, allowing task forces of survivors deep in enemy territory to act more often before they must return to base and heal.

You can read more about the history and thoughts behind this change here.

Demon Evolution

The demon host has evolved, and is now more varied and dangerous than ever. Some enemies may rend your armor, cause you more lasting harm, pierces through your defenses, and other characteristics that make the different types of demons more unique. You will be required to constantly think on your feet. With this, and the new aura and splash damage mechanics, combat just became a lot more tactical.



To Your Stations!

A new "Defense Planning Mode" in the Colony Management window will allow you to assign ‘rally points’ for your survivors, and activate an alarm that will send all survivors to their stations when an incoming attack has been sighted.

You Can Keep Your Chain Mail On

Your survivor’s avatars will now visually display the armor they have equipped. This feature can be disabled from the options menu if you prefer to see the customizable clothing.
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Offline Asid

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Re: Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
« Reply #17 on: January 18, 2018, 06:40:53 PM »
Update 15 - The Demons
Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation - Suncrash
Survivors,

Three months ago, we decided to postpone our release date to give the final material more polish. The result of that decision was our previous update, “The Neighbors”, that introduced the neighboring settlements mechanic and many other improvements and features.

In Update 14 we focused on polish and ease of life while rebalancing the skill tree and other problem areas, and adding some new content and mechanics.

In this update, we continue the polish and problem-solving trend, while still adding some new content and mechanics that we felt were missing. One of the problems we tried to tackle was repetitiveness in later stages of the game, and we did that by adding more unique items and making enemies different from one another in more than just some stats.



Want to stay up to date? Subscribe for updates
You can also follow us on Facebook or join our Discord.

A full list of changes can be found at the bottom of this post.

More Unique Demons

Survival in the harsh world of Judgement is in no way easy, but we also didn’t want it to be predictable. We offered a wide range of equipment and abilities that can shake up combat and turn the tides of the battle, but so far it has been pretty much one-sided. In update 15 we change that.

Many higher tier enemies will now have new, powerful, passive abilities that may very well require you to change your standard strategy based on your enemy’s composition. A Succubus will create an aura that will bedazzle male survivors around it. Others will rend your armor, cause splash damage or more lasting damage than normal.

More enemy abilities will be added in subsequent updates.

Traders 2.0

One of the biggest concerns we’ve heard from you, the community, in the past few months has been concerning traders. We heard that the mechanic is not serving its purpose and is pretty much useless.

We were in a bit of a conundrum. On one hand, we didn’t want traders to be overpowered and provide an easy way for players to gain high tier equipment, making research and crafting redundant. On the other hand, we did want them to be a viable way to boost your strength, and for the arrival of traders to be something that players look forward to.

So in this update, we’ve made some changes to improve traders. First, we increased the chance of a trader offering something that the player will be interested in. Traders will now offer more items, a few of which are guaranteed to be equipment. We also changed the item selection algorithm, instead of being completely random, we now try to prioritize at least a few items that you are likely to be interested in, in your current situation. This algorithm is moddable and can be tweaked. Second, we added some valuable items that can only be acquired through trade. Last, we increased the selling price of equipment to 25%, like raw materials, so it’s a bit easier to acquire enough scrap to buy valuable equipment.

So far in the beta branch, the feedback has been positive and we believe we got this right, although we may still tweak and improve it.



Usable Items

As explained above, traders will now offer a new range of usable items that are capable of benefiting the players in numerous ways. You will find journals that allow you to retrain your survivor’s skills, get an XP boost or learn an entirely new skill. Others may gain you research points, or help you rescue additional survivors to join your colony.

In the Inventory window, there is now a new “Use” tab that lets you use these items that you purchased.

Auras & Splash Damage

Two new combat mechanics have been added - Auras, and Splash Damage.
Auras are a passive ability that can boost or debuff surrounding units. The Succubus, for example, now debuffs male survivors around it, making them less efficient. Two new items that your survivors can wield have been added as well, providing various benefits to surrounding survivors.

Splash damage is a passive modifier that allows a unit’s basic attacks to deal a percent of its damage to other units surrounding its target. For example, the fire-spitting Caorthannach will deal 50% of it’s damage to other survivors. Shotguns will deal some of their damage to surrounding enemies as well.
We hope these new mechanics will increase the tactics involved in combat missions further beyond cover, flanking and active abilities.



Defense Planning

This feature has been requested many times by the community – the ability to designate ‘rally points’ for your survivors, pre-selected positions they should take when the demons invade. A new ‘Defense Planning Mode’ option in the Colony Management window, will let you view each survivor’s designated position and assign new positions.

You will also get two warnings before any imminent invasion to your base – one will be in time to recall some of your task forces back to base, and another one right before the invasion, just in time to activate the defense plan and send your survivors to their defensive positions.



Temporary and Lasting Damage

Another feature strongly influenced by community feedback, Temporary Damage is a new mechanic that has a meaningful effect on the flow of the game. Most of the damage your survivors receive will now be temporary. This damage can be healed using medkits or other active combat abilities and is also automatically healed as soon as the fight is over.

A smaller percent of that damage will be longer term ‘Lasting Damage’, and can only be healed by resting at your base or by using medicine at the infirmary. Natural healing has also changed a little, survivors will no longer regain health while working, however, they will regain health much faster while sleeping.

This new mechanic allows you to engage in multiple fights in distant biomes before being forced back to camp, making exploration less tedious but also deeper strategically, as you now have to carefully consider your survivor’s health both inside and outside of combat.

You can read more about this in our Dev Diary post.



Difficulty Curve

Every update we deal with the arduous task of making Judgement both challenging yet rewarding. Whenever a new mechanic or new content are introduced, we have to make sure they don’t make the game too easy or too hard, and we always strive to improve our difficulty curve to be gradual and make sense.

There have been many changes under the hood in Update 15, many of them aimed toward the mid and late game, something that will become even more important as we get closer to the full release of the game that will be longer with more content.

We reworked the random enemy generator used for scavenging, defense, rescue and much more. It is now more flexible to control, and we used that flexibility to make the difficulty curve more gradual and scale better.

Visual Updates

As always, we also offer a wide range of visual updates and improvements. There have been improvements to many structures and doodads such as barrels and bodies, and you should see this mostly in new the slums biome maps. We’ve also improved the blackish fog that covers the world post-demon-invasion.

Another new feature will make all armor worn by survivors visible in the game view, although this can be disabled via the options menu if you prefer to see the customizable clothing of your survivors.



Modding

We’ve updated the modding guide to match our latest changes and explained some of the previously unexplained mechanics around the enemy generator algorithm. We also included in the latest build pretty much all the configuration files that were previously not included, such as those configuring the random events and the possible portrait combinations for survivors you find. Most of these are not yet covered in the guide but feel free to check the original files and ask us questions (preferably through our Discord Server) if you don’t understand something.

Other company news

In addition to our effort in improving Judgment we have some other company news as well. A new team member, Harel, has joined us and taken over many of the design, marketing, and community management aspects.

We also recently launched a new Discord Server which you are welcome to join. We are very easy to reach through there, and you’re welcome to chat with us, other survivors or leave feedback / bug reports. We have a Settlement Name Poll going on right now, where you can offer names for settlements that will be added in the full release.

Last, we have a new Suncrash Website. The old one was looking pretty bad, outdated, and was using tools that made it hard to update. The new website is much simpler and was built internally using only HTML, CSS and Javascript (with the bootstrap framework).

Previous saves and mods

Happily, the changes in Update 15 allowed us to continue to support older saved games, from Update 14. You should be able to continue your previous saves without any issues, even most of the balancing changes should easily catch up once you update.

Many mods written for previous versions should be able to work with this new update as well, but some, especially those adding or modifying world map biomes or difficulty settings will need to be updated. Also, any mods adding enemies or items in tiers higher than those we have in the game will need to make some updates to support traders and the new enemy generation algorithm. See here for a list of backward-compatibility breaking changes.

Older versions of the game are available through the "Betas" tab of steam (right click the game in the library, choose properties, then the betas tab, and select the version you want from the drop-down).

Full Change List

•   Mechanics: Some of the damage taken in combat is now temporary damage, that is automatically regained after battle.
•   Mechanics: Combat healing abilities can now only heal temporary damage and not lasting damage.
•   Mechanics: Some items may now be used outside of combat for different bonuses.
•   Mechanics: You can now perform "Defense Planning" that lets you pre-determine where each survivor needs to be when preparing for combat, and activate that combat plan when necessary.
•   Mechanics: Added an aura mechanic, where some enemies and items provide bonus or penalty to units around them.
•   Mechanics: Added splash damage mechanic, some enemies and weapons deal a fraction of their damage to other units around the main target.
•   Mechanics: We've made some enemies more unique by doing more lasting damage than others, applying status effects on their targets, having auras that provide bonus to alies or penalties to enemies, or deal splash damage.
•   Mechanics: You now get two warnings before combat, one that should give you some time to return some task forces to help with the defense, and the second one before the attack happens to give you some time to position your survivors for battle.
•   Usability: Status effect (green and red arrow) icons no longer block clicks (like attack commands, selecting the creature under them, etc).
•   Usability: You can no longer build on the map edges, because enemies spawn there and building there would cause them to spawn inside your base.
•   Usability: You can now see which tier and how rare each item is. These affect its price, and strenght of weapons/armor, and when they appear in loot.
•   Usability: When a survivor is attacked while idle (not attacking or moving, most commonly melee hiding behind cover), the survivor will automatically turn to face one of their attackers, so they don't get flanked unecessarily. They may still be flanked if attacked from several directions.
•   Usability: Skills that allow survivors to equip rare weapon of a certain type are now labeled correctly. Previously it seemed that no weapons of that type could be equipped without the skill which caused confusion.
•   Usability: The game now warns when changeing Anti-Aliasing settings that this may cause some recording software to become stuck.
•   Usability: Can disable crafting stations, to prevent survivors from walking to remote areas for crafting (mostly useful for food table)
•   Usability: Added an option that requires confirmation before performing a research, choosing a skill or using an item in the base. Enable from the options menu.
•   Usability: Confirmation windows now appear on top of other windows instead of closing them.
•   Usability: Now displaying "Can Equip" bonuses in separate lines in the skills window.
•   Visuals: The armor that a survivors wear now determines their appearance in the game. Can be disabled if you prefer to see the clothing you selected.
•   Visuals: Replaced the overall pants with another model, due to it being ugly and other technical issues.
•   Visuals: Tweaked survivor body texture because they were too bright compared to the portrait colors.
•   Visuals: Color tweaks to increase contrast.
•   Visuals: Improved the fog.
•   Visuals: Improved slums combat maps appearance dramatically.
•   Visuals: Increased variety of barrels in combat map.
•   Visuals: Increased variety of crossed bodies in combat map.
•   Visuals: Tweaked dark angel a bit, making it darker.
•   Balancing: New algorithm for choosing items that a trader offers, so that they offer more items that the player is likely to want at that given time.
•   Balancing: Trader item tier now depends on player's own research tier, instead of game day.
•   Balancing: Improved enemy generation algorithm to provide more control and allow us to create a more graduate difficulty curve.
•   Balancing: Removed the "Enemy Difficulty" difficulty setting, that affected what types of enemies you would encounter. Use enemy progression and enemy stats difficulty settings instead.
•   Balancing: Amount of loot (per stack) in scavenge now scales better with combat difficulty.
•   Balancing: Reduced amount of resources requested by neighbors.
•   Balancing: Shotguns now deal splash damage.
•   Balancing: Lich now deals splash damage and applies a chill effect on its targets.
•   Balancing: Succubus now has an aura that debuffs nearby male survivors.
•   Balancing: Caorthannach now deals splash damage with its fire spitting attacks.
•   Balancing: The Demon's attacks now apply a rend armor debuff that lowers survivors' armor.
•   Balancing: Added some more low level loot options.
•   Balancing: There are now always
•   Balancing: Made imps and fire imps a bit stronger (increased their accuracy)
•   Balancing: There are now more tier 1 scavenge opportunities in grasslands and less tier 0, when you get a bit further away from base.
•   Balancing: Reduced the amount of equipment found while scavenging while increasing raw materials. There's still plenty to be found.
•   Balancing: Made "rare" weapons and armor (those that required a skill to equip) a bit stronger to better reward having those special skills.
•   Balancing: There are now guaranteed to be a few scavenge positions right next to the base with very easy fights (for that scavenge step in the campaign that is required to unlock the rescue mission).
•   Balancing: Made some starting skills impossible for some professions (like Engineer and Brute, since most of the Engineer's benefits are around base work, while brute reduces work speed across the board).
•   Balancing: Resources that require building mines to gather them will no longer spawn too close to the map edge (since you can no longer build there)
•   Content: Added a few items that can be used outside of combat to give a survivor some skills that cannot be acquired otherwise. These items can only be bought from a trader.
•   Content: Added a few items that can be used outside of combat to give survivor an XP boost, or reset their skills. These items can only be bought from a trader.
•   Content: Traders now sell items that provide science or occult research points.
•   Content: Added trader-only items that can spawn rescue missions.
•   Content: Added more combat maps for Urban, Suburbs and Slum settings.
•   Fixed bug: When an item had no sell price (like wood), you couldn't undo purchasing it because it was disabled in the sell window.
•   Fixed bug: Limit survivor level to 6 (increasing above 6 was not doing anything anyway, only confusing)
•   Fixed bug: When applying multiple effects on an enemy that would cause their walk or attack speed to be below 0% they would actually become faster. There is now a minimum movemenet speed of 0.1 and attack speed of 0.5
•   Fixed bug: In some resolutions the game day would not be visible the load game screen
•   Fixed bug: Sometimes when opening a help page it would be scrolled down unecessarily.
•   Fixed bug: The research window scrolled down too much below all the research subjects.
•   Fixed bug: Using combat abilities on patrolling enemies will now be considered as an attack and cause the enemies to become aggressive.
•   Fixed bug: Defender profession now behaves like fighter in regards to preferred tasks.
•   Fixed bug: There was no animation when using the training grounds.
•   Fixed bug: A pathfinding glitch that could cause survivors to take a non-optimal path, which in turn caused the survivors to walk back and forth indefenitely in rare scenarios.
•   Fixed bug: When priorities window is scrolled down and then survivors leave the base, then the window would open scrolled down unecessarily.
•   Fixed bug: Healing in the infirmary would show incorrect numbers and use more medicine than was necessary in some cases.
•   Fixed bug: Disabling environment effects would not work properly after switching from base to map and back.
•   Fixed bug: Priest had 4 stalwart skills instead of 3, and only 2 dark weapons.
•   Fixed bug: Survivors didn't heal while sleeping.
•   Fixed bug: The same random seed would generate different results when used right after launching the game vs after playing and quitting back to main menu.
•   Modding: Difficulty settings now have a separate configuration file, and some of their syntax has been changed.
•   Modding: Can now configure the chance for the game to spawn male or female (or other types added in a mod). It's possible to create a female only or male only mod.
•   Modding: Localized special survivor names so they can be localized as well
•   Modding: Added remaining original config files to build, such as those responsible for random events and selecting default portraits for new survivors.
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Offline Asid

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Re: Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
« Reply #18 on: February 12, 2018, 12:57:31 PM »
Update 15.1 on beta branch - New level up system
7 FEBRUARY   - SUNCRASH

Survivors,

Usually we release larger updates farther apart, but we're making an exception. There's been an issue that's been bugging many of you (and us) - which is the level up system.

So here we are with patch 15.1 in the beta branch, which improves several smaller issues, but the main change we want to test ASAP is the new level-up system for survivors.

The full patch notes of this update will be published when the update is released on the main branch.

Reminder: To play on the beta branch, right click the game in the steam client, select properties, and then select "beta" from the betas tab.

Want to stay up to date? Subscribe for updates[subscribe.suncrash.com]
You can also follow us on Facebook or join our Discord[discord.gg].

German and Chinese translations have been added and the the latest build is fully translated to these languages.



New level-up system

The "choose one of 3" system that works rather well for X-com, was feeling a bit out of sync for us. Many of the skills are just stat improvements, and not game-changing abilities, plus we have so many different skills in our game, that it just doesn't work like that.

So we changed it. Now, every level you will get a skill point, that you can use to improve one of 8 skill categories. The more you improve in the same category, the better the rewards, and at tier 4 of each category you get some special skills, more than just stats in most cases. In some cases, you may even select one of several skills when improving a category, allowing for even more customization.

Which categories are available depend on the survivor's profession, and now you can choose any of those to improve, without any RNG limitations. But it was still important for us to have a random element, because part of the challenge is to make the best of what you get, and not just use the same winning strategy every time you play. For that reason, we kept the starting skills, which tend to have a very large impact, larger than most level up skills.

We left the level 6 limit for now, and will probably increase it in the full release, although levels 5 and 6 give you 2 skill points, for a total of 8 skills you can choose, allowing you to max out 2 categories per survivor.

We hope you like it, let us know what you think.

Previous Saves

We made the extra effort to support old saves, so you can load old saved games, however your survivors will lose all the level-up skills they had. Instead, they will get skill points according to their level which you can use to purchase skills using the new system.

Mod Support

The new level up system is fully supported and the Modding Guide[modding.judgmentgame.com] was updated. However, older mods that define level-up skills using the old system will not work properly. We expect the game will still work, however, all the changes in this area will not affect the new system. See the Backwards-Compatibility breaking changes[judgment.wikia.com].
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Re: Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
« Reply #19 on: February 14, 2018, 10:20:06 PM »
Update 15.1 - New Level-up System
Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation - Suncrash

Survivors,

Our latest update, 15.1, breaks away slightly from our usual pattern of releasing a major update every few months. However, we felt it was important to put the changes and upgrades in this update in your hands as quickly as possible.

15.1 introduces a few small improvements, and one total overhaul to our level-up system – with the intention of giving you a lot more flexibility and control over how you develop your survivors over time.

Want to stay up to date? Subscribe for updates
You can also follow us on Facebook or join our Discord.

A full list of changes can be found at the bottom of this post.

New level-up system

Existing players are familiar with the old leveling up system. After gaining a level, players will be able to select one out of three skills. Those skills were selected at random from a pool of skills when every profession has a slightly different pool to choose from. The original goal was to offer a lot of randomness and replayability – even two survivors with the same profession will end up very differently because they will have different options and paths to level up and customize themselves.

The result, however, was underwhelming – it created a great deal of imbalance between survivors, as some could specialize while others ended up being a weaker jack-of-all-trades. At times, players reported they felt they had no ‘right’ choice as they didn’t want any of the three skills – and were just leveling up so they could get to the next. It also made balancing a lot harder, especially as it was harder to predict when players would unlock key skills, such as those allowing the use of rare and powerful weapons.

The new system does away with all of that – while preserving the core balance of the old system and all the old skills. However, instead of a random pool of skills, all the skills have been arranged into fixed, linear categories, or branches. Every profession has access to 8 (out of 23) of those branches. So, for example, an engineer will have access to the construction, crafting, evasion, mining, quarrying, research, tech weapons and tools expert branches.

Every time a survivor levels up, they gain a skill point they can then invest in any of the skill branches. In total, survivors can learn up to 4 skills at every branch, with the final skill often being a ‘capstone’ skill and offering very strong abilities, unlocks or even specialization options. The final point in every category, and sometimes earlier, offer more than one option, allowing for even more customization.



It was important to us that we keep the element of randomness and replayability, however, so all survivors will still have their own random starting skills, that can have a very significant impact on gameplay and your decision on how to level up and customize your survivor – and whether you want to make them a highly specialized powerhouse, or well-rounded characters that can help in many different aspects of the game.

We also increased the maximum skill points from 6 to 8 (levels 5 and 6 provide 2 skill points each), so any survivor can end up unlocking two capstone skills.

The result, we feel, is more intuitive and transparent and offers a lot of room for future modability and expansion. Early feedback has been very positive and we’re very excited about the future of this system

Efficiency

This update was a shorter one, but we did get a chance to add some usability and quality of life improvements that you requested and weren't too big.

One of these is a neat new stat called "Efficiency", you can see it for every survivor in their skill window, or for the entire colony in the Colony Management window. This stat shows how much work gets done relative to the time spent in the base. So if a survivor has no bonus or penalty in crafting, and they spend 18 out of 24 hours crafting (the rest is spent on traveling from place to place), then they have a 75% efficiency (they got 18 man hours of work done in 24 hours). If the same survivor had a +50% crafting speed, then their efficiency would be 112% (29 man hours of work in 24 hours). This stat is a good indicator for how efficient your base economy is.



Other Changes

Other usability changes include showing more information about rituals, showing how long until an effect expires, making Night Howls give a warning before you are attacked, and a few others.

Previous Saves

We made the extra effort to support old saves, so you can load old saved games, however your survivors will lose all the level-up skills they had. Instead, they will get skill points according to their level which you can use to purchase skills using the new system.

Mod Support

The new level up system is fully supported and the Modding Guide was updated. However, older mods that define level-up skills using the old system will not work properly. We expect the game will still work, however, all the changes in this area will not affect the new system. See the Backwards-Compatibility breaking changes.

Full Change List
•   Mechanics: New level-up system in which survivors that level up get skill points that they can choose which skills to improve from 8 options, that differ per profession. Some skill levels allow choosing from several options.
•   Usability: Added Efficiency display per survivor and for the entire colony, that measures how much work they perform relative to time spent in base
•   Usability: When hovering an unlocked ritual in the research info window (press right click on a research subject), you now see what altar the ritual is cast in.
•   Usability: When hovering a ritual, you now see how long the ritual effect will last and the exact bonuses of the effect.
•   Usability: Active effects (such as those created by rituals) now show how long until they expire when hovering their icon.
•   Balancing: Night howls random event now has a warning before the attack on your base, just like regular base attacks
•   Balancing: Settlement related events happen less often
•   Balancing: Settlement help requests now give bigger bonuses to relationship when successful and lower penalties when failed.
•   Balancing: Close Encounters now guarantee at least 2 tiles between survivors and enemies.
•   Balancing: Made tier 2 melee enemies a bit stronger, and possessed a bit weaker.
•   Content: Replaced the hellgate combat map with something much nicer
•   Content: Added new special skills that do more than improve stats, such as a skill that lets survivors sometimes craft items for free, or get double yield when mining a single resource.
•   Modding: Translation mods (mods that modify Texts and Help files alone) are now eligible for achievements.
•   Fixed bug: Ancient Manuscript would incorrectly give science research points instead of occult.
•   Fixed bug: When using the Mutate Soul ritual, survivors will no longer lose the skills they earned by reading books.
•   Fixed bug: After editing task force members the info window in the bottom left did not always update immediately.
•   Fixed bug: Game will no longer break when a survivor has more than 6 combat abilities.
•   Fixed bug: Fixed mouse-hover feedback on flag icon in the title screen.
•   Fixed bug: When enabling "approve actions", research costs will no longer be removed even if you choose not to approve.
•   Fixed bug: Sometimes tiles appeared as if they were within enemy vision range but would not aggro when a survivor stepped into them.
•   Fixed bug: Hovering over the "Manage" button would show the "Priorities" tooltip.
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Re: Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
« Reply #20 on: March 16, 2018, 05:07:27 PM »
Dev Diary: Traders
15 MARCH   - SUNCRASH

Greetings survivors, and welcome to the second installment in our dev-diary series. Today, we are going to focus on the trader algorithm improvement that was introduced in Update 15.

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The First Traders

We initially released the trading feature in Update 13. For the first time in Judgement, trading allowed players to engage in economics, selling surplus items and purchasing rare resources or powerful equipment that would help them battle the demonic horde.

While the feature was well received, the overwhelming feedback was that most items sold by the traders were either useless or too expensive. So expensive, in fact, that many players didn’t bother with the trading mechanics at all.

Trading was meant to be a secondary channel to receiving certain necessary goods. Getting a trader visit was supposed to be an event players looked forward to, and one of the biggest rewards for being in good relationships with neighboring settlements. Clearly, we wanted traders to be useful.

Trader prices were designed to be high, so that this route is actually secondary, and only used occasionally to get higher tier equipment. The main progress path was still to be achieved through research, crafting and scavenging. Getting higher tier equipment is one of the more challenging milestones in Judgment, where players need to get higher level research resources while still using lower level equipment. If players could easily buy their way to the next tier, that challenge would be lost. So, how do we make traders meaningful and useful, without breaking the balance?

Traders v2.0

The first step was to clearly identify the problem. The core problem, as we saw it, was not necessarily that the prices were too high, but that players had nothing they really wanted, such that they would be willing to pay the high prices, being offered to them. Players often got lower tier gear and resources, those that they could already craft themselves, and were unwilling to pay high prices for them.

Once we identified the issue, we attacked it on three fronts. First, we increased the selling price of equipment. It is now sold at 25% of the buying price, as opposed to 10% before Update 15. This would make it a bit more feasible to get enough scraps for an upgrade by selling lower tier equipment.

Second, we added some new items that are helpful, but not absolutely essential (as opposed to higher tier equipment), that can only be obtained through traders. You can find journals that will let your survivors learn new skills, gain experience, or even reset their skill points.



The third part of the solution was the most complicated one - a new algorithm that is meant to predict what the player might really be interested in buying, and offering some of these items at the traders.

Originally, the items a trader offered were a random selection from the items in a given tier, that was based on the current day in the game. This meant that when a player progressed faster than the demons, they would be offered useless, low tier equipment. If they advanced slower and were at a disadvantage, they would get very expensive high level equipment that they could rarely afford.

Desirability Calculations

To improve that, we designed the algorithm from scratch and came up with an important variable: Desirability, our way to try and gauge how much a player would desire to obtain an item, at their current state. Every item that a trader might offer is analyzed, and then every trader offers at least a few items with very high desirability.

So how is desirability calculated? Let’s take a weapon as an example. Clearly, players would love to get their hands on a weapon that is better than anything they have, so all weapons that are one tier above the player’s current research tier get a bonus to their desirability. They are also less likely to want to spend a lot of money on weapons that they can make themselves, as it is more cost-effective to craft them. Weapons get a penalty to desirability when a player has the research required to craft them, and an even bigger penalty if the crafting station and resources are available.

Similar calculations are used for raw materials. If a player has none of this material, and the material’s tier is in line with what we assume the player needs to make their equipment, they get a boost to desirability. However, if a player already has a large stock of this resource, or can craft as many as are needed, there is a penalty.

The result is a system that tries to ensure that every trader offers the player some equipment they could really use (and usually not get anywhere else), and some materials they are currently lacking.

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So far, our data and player feedback shows a major improvement. Traders are now actually used to upgrade equipment and get other unique items, but only so much that they provide a helping hand towards reaching the higher tier naturally so that players can craft their own higher tier equipment. This is exactly what we were aiming for. Feel the higher tier fights are too difficult? Then spend some more time on your base economy, sell a few lower tier resources and equipment, then buy a single piece of higher tier gear which can make the difference between victory and defeat, when scavenging for those pesky research kits that you need to craft your own high level equipment. Or maybe just buy that first research kit directly.

The traders algorithm is also moddable, modders can tinker with the bonuses and penalties to desirability, how many items a trader offers, and how many of these items are of high desirability.

Have your own insights and ideas on the traders’ mechanic? Let us know!
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Re: Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
« Reply #21 on: March 25, 2018, 02:59:19 AM »
Dev Diary: New Professions
23 MARCH   - SUNCRASH

Greetings, survivors.

As we get closer to the day of Judgment (pun intended), we feel it is time to highlight some of the content you can expect to see in the full version. You will be facing enemies that are far more dangerous and powerful than you ever have before – but you will also have access to a whole range of new equipment, rituals, research options and more.

Today, we would like to talk about the strongest weapon in the game – the survivors themselves. More specifically, the new professions that will be added in the full release. Designing and implementing them has been a tough, but rewarding, challenge.

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Three new professions

The design task called for three brand new professions that will complement the previous roster for a total of nine professions. In addition, the Defender profession needed work – it was originally added on a whim without a proper design process, and ended up feeling like a copy of the Fighter profession with different level-up skills.

A profession in Judgement is composed of two main elements – a pool of unique, profession-specific starting skills as well as eight level-up skill paths. Every survivor receives one random profession-specific starting skill – those often represent the survivor’s background before the apocalypse and can be anything from ‘scientist’ to ‘ex-cop’. In addition, as a survivor gains experience and levels up, they can advance in any of the eight skill paths available to their profession.

Adding new professions to Judgement is not an easy task. Due to the random nature of the game, there are certain requirements:

•   Every team of survivors needs to be at least semi-functional, so even if you have a starting team of all fighters or all engineers, you still won't be at too big of a disadvantage.
•   Starting skills, which are the only random element here, need to be relatively powerful so that players have to adapt to the situation instead of using the same strategy every playthrough.
•   All skill paths must be well divided across all professions, so you will always have a reasonable chance to have at least some survivors that are good at critical tasks, such as research or farming.
•   All skill paths must be well represented so that there is no dominated strategy (a strategy that is always worse than the alternatives) and all upgrade paths are viable. This includes making sure there are adequate starting skills that can complement all skill paths of a given profession.

So, the new professions must be distinct enough to be interesting, while maintaining the general balance of the game, not being too powerful as to make the game too easy, or too unique so that not having this profession/skill would put you at a disadvantage. Obviously, they also have to fit the thematic style of Judgment.






With all of that in mind, we first approached the task by trying to identify where our previous roster was lacking in terms of popular and important skill paths that weren’t common enough. The first thing we realized is that we needed more professions that are good at research, both science and occult - and from that, we came up with the Academic.

The Academic is best described as an interesting mix between the engineer and the priest professions, which will makes it highly desirable to most players. Not only for its proficiency in research, the Academic will also be sought after for its access to two of the most important production skills in the game – crafting and farming.

From a thematic point of view, the academic provides a chance to include a whole range of interesting backgrounds as starting skills, such as mathematicians and necromancers.






The next profession, The Artisan, went through several revisions before we were happy with it. The original plan called for the artisan to be one of the most useful jack-of-all-trades camp followers, excelling in many of the various production skills.

The result, however, was that the artisan felt a bit too lopsided and often too similar to the Engineer. Going back to the drawing board, we ended up designing the artisan to be a different sort of jack-of-all-trades. It combines two important production skills - crafting and gathering - along with mining, making sure the artisan itself has access to most of the fundamentals that are needed to keep your industry working efficiently. The rest of the skills include some of the more standard weapon skills, such as pistols and rifles, in addition to defensive skills that boost resistance and health. The result is a useful camper that can also protect your base when needed.

The Artisan starting skills also fit the world of Judgement, where survivors had real lives before the invasion - those would be dock workers and oil miners, factory workers and laborers.






The third and final profession we added, the Scout, is a small departure from the other professions in that it has access to a new skill path unique to this profession: scouting. Scouting is the only skill path that can benefit an entire task force.

Scouting can give your task force benefits such as faster travel speed and longer vision, and can even offer bonuses to the scout’s attack range. Since the scout also has the marksmanship skill path, these survivors have the potential to get a total of +2 to their weapon's range – a truly interesting combination.

The scout differs from the survivalist by having less defensive and offensive skills, but more weapon skills. It’s also the only profession other than the fighter and defender that can specialize in automatic weapons.

The Scout's starting skills are also varied, ranging from trained rangers to hobos.






Finally, the Defender was significantly reworked. The defender has fewer weapon skills than the fighter now, but can access all four defensive skill paths, including a path specializing in melee and a new skill path that increases a survivor’s armor values. In addition, the defender is an archetype that comes loaded with starting skills that complement its defensive capabilities and give various benefits that help it avoid damage and allow it to withstand more punishment, such as the SWAT officer that gets a bonus to protection from cover, the bouncer, and a bodyguard that takes less damage from all attacks.

The result is that the fighter tends to be a better all-around soldier while the defender is your ultimate front-line tank. All in all, we think this profession serves its purpose a lot better now.



I hope you enjoyed this short sneak peek into our thought processes and what you can expect to see in the release version – more options, more possibilities, and more combinations.

As always, we welcome feedback and would love to hear your thoughts.
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Re: Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
« Reply #22 on: April 19, 2018, 02:29:18 PM »
Dev Diary: Designing Endgame Equipment
Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation - Suncrash

Welcome survivors, to another Judgment dev diary.

In our last diary I focused on the new professions that will be introduced in the full release. Today I want to continue this trend by talking about endgame weapons and armor.

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Equipment and Tiers

In Judgment, most weapons, armor, and accessories are gated behind tier-based research that requires unique research materials. These materials, in turn, are most commonly found in the outside world, protected by higher-tier enemies - so you need to defeat tier 3 enemies before you can unlock tier 3 research. Acquiring the necessary research materials and advancing to the next research tier is one of the more challenging milestones in the game..

The current Early Access version includes the first three tiers. The release version will include new items in existing tiers and two additional tiers, essentially doubling the amount of content in the game. These are accompanied by new, more dangerous foes, the very lords of hell, but I will write about those in a future dev diary. For now, I want to discuss your tools for fighting those demons.

New Weapons

The task to design new weapons for the full release was twofold. It included both coming up with convincing and interesting weapons, but also finding ways to fill up holes we had in our previous weapon roster.



Many of our survivors have starting skills that provide benefits when using certain types of weapons such as bonuses to pistols, tech weapons, automatic weapons and such. However, some categories didn’t have enough useful weapons to complement them.

Finding suitable weapons to fit into the previous three tiers had been fun, and resulted in some cool new weapons such as the Holy Preacher and the Witchbane - new lower tier occult weapons.

The main task, however, was designing endgame weapons. The goal here is not just to make more powerful and interesting weapons – but to slowly add more tactical options as the player progresses in the game. The lords of hell can not be defeated by sheer brute force - it will also require the cunning application of abilities and powers. Higher tier weapons do not rely on more damage alone, but also on stronger and more diverse effects and abilities.

Some of these new weapons are simply a linear progression of weapons you already know – the Sniper Rifle leads to the 50-Caliber Rifle and finally to an advanced, tech-based sniper rifle that fires guided projectiles and offers incredible range and accuracy. Similarly, the Coilgun will be replaced by the mightier Railgun as you advance in the tiers, then by a Laser Rifle and a Beam Cannon – all adding increasingly powerful focused shot abilities.

Other weapons offer far more interesting options. The tier 5 Bazooka has low fire rate and accuracy but is buffed by an incredibly powerful splash damage effect that makes it a superb weapon against tight groups of demons. The Minigun will quickly dispatch hordes of low-health enemies such as hell hounds, but will prove less effective against more robust opponents. The Incinerator and Acid Gun will deal splash damage that applies a burning effect, reducing the armor of the demon horde and softening them for an effective long-range attack.



It was also a chance to add weapons that had some interesting and unorthodox inspiration, including allusions to theology, such as the the Angelic Arbalest, a divine bow forged in heaven. Another interesting creation is the the Acid Gun, a steampunk-esque invention hailing back to the days of alchemy, now crafted with advanced technology.

Powerful new Armors

Adding additional armor choices had been a somewhat more challenging task, so I focused on the end goal – adding armors that aren’t just better, but also open new tactical options and active combat abilities. Thinking about what sort of abilities I wanted to be granted by the new armor pieces helped me, in turn, come up with the armor choices themselves.



So, in tier 5, you will unlock the Combat Suit that gives a temporary buff to damage while the Rocket Suit gives a significant boost to movement speed. Unlike the Holy Armor in tier 2, a Paladin’s Vestment does not grant the active bless ability, but has a bless aura that allows the champion to lead troops into battle. The Armor of Souls is a new dark armor that grants a passive buff to damage, while Gaia's Wrath is an incredibly rare and powerful nature armor that can make its wearer nearly invulnerability to damage, temporarily, at the cost of speed.

In conclusion, the full release comes with dozens of new weapons and armor – we only touched a fragment of what we plan to include. Keep following our dev diaries for more insight into the new content coming in the full release and our thought processes designing it.
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Re: Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
« Reply #23 on: April 19, 2018, 02:30:33 PM »
Expanding Judgment's language support
Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation - Suncrash

Survivors, we come bearing news.

Surviving in the apocalypse is hard enough as it is, so we want to make it a little bit easier. We want you to be able to survive (or try to) in your own language.



Official Translations
In the rapidly approaching full release, we will be adding official support for the French language, in addition to the existing official translations to German and Chinese. Special thanks again to those who helped support these languages before we created official translations - ZombieKingdom (Chinese), and Senhar (French).

Integrating Community Translations
In addition, we are working with modders that created the Spanish, Italian and Russian languages, to integrate their translations directly into the game, so you won't need to download the mods from the workshop. Special thanks to Nivaska (Russian), Darth Vader (Italian) and Siodog (Spanish).

If any of you want to help translate to additional languages, please drop us an email to contact@suncrash.com, or come chat with us on our discord server. I would also like to thank all our other modders, that added cool game modes, languages, and other improvements to the game.

We are especially excited to offer the upcoming campaign story in so many languages. Can't wait!
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Re: Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
« Reply #24 on: April 19, 2018, 02:32:55 PM »
The Apocalypse is coming! Full release announcement
Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation - Suncrash

Survivors!

Oil your firearms and stretch your bowstrings. Ready your med-kits and open your food caches. The apocalypse is coming, and it now has a date.

For several weeks now, we have hinted, insinuated and whispered rumors. Now, after we have consulted oracles, seers and books of prophecies, we know the exact day the world will end.

Judgement day is coming – on the 3rd of May.



We are very proud to announce that the full version of Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation will officially be released in a few short weeks. Two years ago we released Judgment on Early Access, and we truly feel we are ready now – and eager to show you everything that we have planned.

The full release version is going to include a full story campaign, complete with cut scenes, that will let you delve into the mystery of the demon invasion – and try to find a way for humanity to survive it.

That’s not all! The world of Judgment is going to be much bigger, with huge world maps 250% the size of the previous maps that include new biomes, tougher demons, many new items, new rituals to perform, and new random events for you to discover. We will also include an official French translation, sandbox mode, 64-bit native version and a whole range of quality of life improvements and bug fixes. Community supported translations to additional languages that are integrated into the game are planned as well - see our previous announcement.  (above post)

The full release update is going to be our biggest update to date, but you know us – we aren’t done yet. We already have a few content updates planned, and we will keep working with the community to improve the game after the full release.

You can find some more info on full version content in our last two dev diaries - New Professions and Endgame Equipment.
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Re: Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
« Reply #25 on: April 26, 2018, 02:15:51 PM »
Judgment OST Released - Free for a limited time
Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation - Suncrash

Survivors, are you as excited as we are? Only one week until full release!

In the meantime, we wanted to tell you that we hear you loud and clear – time and time again you indicated how much you enjoy Judgment’s music. So, we are happy to announce that in conjunction with the full release, we are also releasing the full original soundtrack. But that’s not all! As a thank you for your continued support, anyone who bought the game during Early Access, and who will buy the game in the week following the full release will gets it for free!

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The soundtrack DLC will be automatically added to the account of all players who already own the game and those who will buy the game during the free period. No action is required. You can read more about Soundtracks and Steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/847760/Judgment_Original_Soundtrack/
After the week following the full release the soundtrack will no longer be free, and will be sold separately instead.

In the last few months we have worked closely with Alon Kaplan, our composer, to create several new tracks that will be featured in the game, some of which you haven't heard yet. Those include a new ‘night’ theme, a new day theme and music that will be used in the campaign cutscenes. The soundtrack also includes a bonus track – the original opening score for the game when it was just released in Early Access, that has since been removed.

You can listen to a sample track on SoundCloud. https://soundcloud.com/alonkaplan/lostechos

Alon has composed for over seventy video games, tv shows and movies, and we couldn’t be happier with the work he has done for Judgment. You can check out more of Alon's work.

Alon’s original work captures the tone of the Apocalypse perfectly – the down-to-earth and hopeful themes of the survivors, told by jazz and guitar elements, combined with the more subdued and dark themes that represents the world around them. We can’t wait to hear what you think of the new tracks, and we hope you will enjoy the OST while you're waiting for the full release.

Full track List
1. Main Theme – 2:01
2. Surviving Another Day – 2:30
3. Shadow of the Day – 3:17
4. Lost Echoes – 3:25
5. Dark Whisper – 1:15
6. A Night in the Forest – 1:23
7. This is Our Story – 1:54
8. Battle Music (Remix) – 2:14
9. Bonus Track: The Start (Deleted Track) – 1:26
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Re: Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
« Reply #26 on: May 03, 2018, 03:56:41 PM »
Judgment is upon us - Full release available now
Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation - Suncrash


Survivors!

We never thought so many people would be eagerly awaiting Judgment day, but here we are. Almost three years in the making, over two years in Early Access, Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation 1.0 is now on Steam!

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The full version is, by far, the biggest single update we have ever released. The update pretty much doubles the amount of content in the game. If you are new to Judgment, you will be happy to hear that for the next week, to celebrate the launch, anyone that purchases the game will get our soundtrack for free.

Why release now?

Originally, we planned to spend half a year in early access. It’s been over two years now, and that time has been very productive. We released ten major updates, received priceless feedback, and had ample time to listen, implement and polish the game. Thanks to our postponing of the full release by another half-year after we were almost ready, we also had enough time to properly balance and debug all the new 1.0 content without being pressed for time. At this stage, we believe it is mature enough to be considered a full game, and no longer in alpha.



What’s next for Judgment?

Saying that we consider Judgment a full game does not mean we have nothing left to add to it. We still have a huge backlog of stuff we want to see added, and we do plan to work on it post-update.

Rest assured that we will be listening to your feedback and fixing or improving as needed. We also have at least one content update planned, with more random events, enemies and items amongst other things. Some cool new mechanics are also being considered, as well as additional game modes. I בan’t promise anything at this moment, but we do plan on adding to Judgment. How much and how often will also depend on our financial ability, which in turn depends on how well the full version sells.

Want to help out? Check out this page. steam://openurl_external/https://steamcommunity.com/linkfilter/?url=http://www.judgmentgame.com/supportus

As we work on these updates, we will also start brainstorming our next project. Judgment is our first game and we learned a LOT along the way. We have leveled up working on it, and are now eager to proceed to the next world. An open world, a blank slate, in which we can use all that we have learned to create a great new experience.

All right, you’re probably dying to hear all the details about the full release update, so let’s dive right in.

Story - Based Campaign

The main feature of 1.0 is the campaign. Its story stretches over 5 episodes, complete with new scripted missions and new maps, cutscenes and multiple endings.

Note that this is not an expansion of the placeholder campaign that we had during Early Access. This is a whole new thing. The beginning may seem a bit similar, since after all there’s are the basics of setting up camp and surviving, but very quickly it becomes something altogether different.



Sandbox Mode

For those that do not want to follow the campaign’s storyline, we also introduced a new sandbox mode. There is no story or campaign missions, simply build, explore and survive for as long as you can. You will be able to unlock all technologies, objects, rituals, and equipment, just like in campaign mode.

Late Game Content

As detailed in our last dev diary, the full release adds two additional tiers - with new weapons, technologies, armor, equipment, enemies, rituals and more. This effectively doubles the amount of content, while adding many fresh challenges.



Additional Changes

While the core of the update is our campaign and new content, every update to Judgment includes a whole range of bug fixes, quality of life improvements and features. The list below is only partial and highlights the biggest changes:

While the core of the update is our campaign and new content, every update to Judgment includes a whole range of bug fixes, quality of life improvements and features. The list below is only partial and highlights the biggest changes:

•   Official support for French.
•   Community-made translations to Spanish, Russian and Italian.
•   The World map is 2.5 times bigger and includes two new biomes: Savannah and Tundra.
•   Additional professions that add increased diversity to your survivors.
•   Survivor level cap increased to level 10, with levels 5 and 10 granting double skill points, so you can max out 3 different skills.
•   More low-tier weapons and armor.
•   More random events.
•   A 64-bit build.
•   Additional music tracks, and various graphic improvements.
•   A short introduction battle that gives a small taste of mid-tier combat early on.
•   New special survivors for you to discover.

Old saves and mods
Old saves from the EA version, unfortunately, will not work with the full version. You can still use the Beta Branches tab in Steam if you want to continue your EA game. Right click the game in your library, select the beta branches tab, and in the drop down select Alpha 15.1.

As for mods, most should still work, but there are a few backwards-compatibility breaking changes that will cause some mods not to work. We'll add a link describing these shortly.

Want to help?

We couldn’t have reached where we are without your continued support, feedback and kind words. But now we need your help again - to spread the word about Judgment! If you are interested in helping, please check this page for what you can do.
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Re: Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
« Reply #27 on: May 09, 2018, 04:05:08 PM »
First post-release patch plans for more content in the future
Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation - Suncrash

Survivors!

It’s only been a few days since Judgment emerged from Early Access, and oh, what a time it has been. We’ve seen an explosion across global media, with numerous youtube videos and twitch streams from around the world. It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to see so many people enjoy our game. Thank you for that.

Of course, the Apocalypse waits for no man. Today we are releasing our first post-release patch, which includes bug fixes of the most glaring issues that you reported just after release, and a few other improvements that were easy and relative risk-free to make. Below you can also read a bit more about our future plans for Judgment.

Here are the two main issues that were fixed. A list of other smaller improvements can be found at the bottom of the post.

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Hit Chance Bug

This was such a small bug, a simple debugging toggle that we accidentally left on. But with such huge implications. The chance to hit, for both demons and survivors, was +50 than what was displayed. The implications of such a bug are huge:

•   The minimum hit chance of 20% suddenly became 70%, making high evasion rather useless.
•   The maximum hit chance was 50% instead of 100%, because 50+50 gives you 100% hit rate. Any additional points spent in accuracy that increased the hit chance above 50 were wasted.
•   Everyone was hitting much more often, dealing damage much faster, making melee and tanks much less useful, and making weapon range an OP stat, because too much damage was dealt before closing in the distance.
•   High accuracy weapons and accuracy improving skills were mostly wasted.
•   Automatic weapons were OP due to high attack rate AND high hit rate.
•   Cover, which increases both accuracy and evasion, was much less useful than it should have been.
•   The penalty penalizing ranged against melee, accuracy penalty at night - all didn’t work as planned.
•   So we fixed it. But that wasn’t enough. This bug was introduced a month ago, so all our balancing tests were done with it. That meant we had to redo them - and that’s what we’ve been doing mostly, for the past 48 hours since we found this issue. And as expected, some things were off. Evasion and tanks suddenly became OP. So here’s what we had to change:
•   Evasion bonuses from skills and items were lowered a little bit.
•   The minimum hit chance was increased from 20% to 30%.
•   Accuracy of all weapons and all enemies increased by 20%

These fixes make Fallen Angels and Morax a bit less OP than they were, specially against tanks, who are now useful against them once again. But fighting against such enemies with high range still requires a change in tactics compared to the lower tier, lower range enemies.

Kidnapped Survivors bug

There was a bug in the campaign mission where survivors were kidnapped. As soon as you reached this point in the campaign, 2 survivors were removed from your base. If these survivors happened to be in a task force, they were NOT removed from the task force. This caused issues, especially if you sent that same task force to rescue these survivors, and then ended up having the same survivor twice. There was a workaround, you simply had to remove the kidnapped survivor manually from the task force, but now it won’t happen any more.

Note: If you have a save with a kidnapped survivor in a task force, you will still have to remove them manually. The fix will prevent it from happening again, but not fix saves after the bug happened.

Plans for the future

We also wanted to take this opportunity to give you some insights into our future plans and roadmap. We have been asked several times what we are planning to do post-release. Let us be clear that, the development of Judgment’s has not ended. This patch will not be the last one, and in the future we do plan to add more content/mechanics, not just fixes.

Our next patch, unless anything urgent comes up, will be a few short weeks from now. During this time we plan to focus on community suggestions, work on quality of life improvements, balance changes and UI fixes based on player feedback. That is our main focus right now.

Following that, we will start working on a larger update that will include more new content and maybe even mechanics. We’re playing with the idea of other game modes, in addition to campaign and sandbox, but no promises since we haven’t thought it through yet.

In the meantime, you can keep yourself up to date following us on social media, or joining our rapidly-growing Discord server.

Other Fixes

•   Warnings will now be shown in the world map as well.
•   Geologist moved to tier 3 research. Waiting for tier 4 before you could search for stones and clay was too much, since you could run out.
•   Geologist no longer needs bricks, since without geologist you can’t find more clay/stone to make bricks, if you ever run out.
•   Companion farms now provide more wheat and vegetables, so a single companion farm is more efficient than 1 wheat and 1 veggie farm. It’s still less efficient than 1 wheat or 1 veggie if you only need that.
•   Abilities time to cast now displayed more accurately, with decimal points.
•   Taskforce management edit members button now shows + and - instead of just +, so it’s clear you can use that to remove survivors as well.
•   Some event rewards tweaked so the reward better fits the game stage
Added demon scales and hell essense to loot in some tier 4/5 scavenge locations (mostly churches).
•   Defenders can no longer start with the weak trait.
•   Language mods no longer disable achievements.
•   Some fixes to Russian translation.

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Re: Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
« Reply #28 on: June 12, 2018, 07:44:20 PM »
Update 16.1 on main branch
Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation - Suncrash

Survivors,

A month ago, we opened the gates of Hell – and a wave of players poured through! We have been overwhelmed by the positive response to Judgment’s release. But we have not been resting – we have been listening carefully to feedback, both from our veteran players and the new. Update 16.1 is the result.

We are releasing 16.1 today to the main branch after a week in the beta branch, where you had a chance to test it out and report any issues or feedback. It includes a range of quality of life improvements and community suggestions meant to make playing Judgment more intuitive and fun.

The full patch notes can be found below.

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You can also follow us on Facebook or join our Discord.



Base Defense, Combat Planning and Awareness

16.1 includes a whole range of improvements meant to improve base defense gameplay. First and foremost, we overhauled the awareness system.

Without doubt, when we set our eyes to do a quality of life patch, we knew we had to address awareness. In its previous form, it was highly un-intuitive. It was not clear what awareness actually did, which was to increase or decrease the strength of base attacks – and not directly decide the time of base attacks.

The awareness meter now serves to indicate when demon attacks will happen, all formulas have been simplified, and awareness no longer affects the difficulty of the attack. The simpler awareness formulas have absolute values instead of exponential and percent-based values as before. Every survivor adds 2 awareness per day, a research can reduce this value by 5 per day, lookout posts being patrolled also reduce this by a set amount.

Since awareness now directly determines how often you are attacked, if you choose to ignore this, you may find yourself under attack every day or two. So make sure to include awareness management decisions as you grow - research, lookout posts, skills such as stealth, and rituals are some examples on how you can manage awareness.

Combat planning has also been improved, including the ability to assign survivors to defensive towers, and survivors will now continue to their assigned posts even if combat starts before they reach it.



Streamlined Scavenging

We have added a few quality of life tweaks that should make scavenging several locations less of a UX hassle, per player feedback. An option has been added to remove the combat summary to speed things up as well.

Crafting Quality of Life

A range of improvements to the UI and AI should allow you easier control of your burgeoning industry. Mostly improved manually assigning survivors to craft specific items without changing crafting priority for everyone, and automatic crafting so that it doesn’t use up more resources than you want it to.

Pistols

We felt pistols were a bit underrepresented in higher tiers (4 and 5), so we added a bunch of new ones. Some can be crafted, some can be scavenged, and one even has explosive bullets! We also added another tier 4 bow.

Previous Saves

Previous saves are supported and it will even fix some corrupted saves from older versions, reducing the amount of bugs and crashes occurring in these games.

Mod Support

The majority of mods should be able to work just fine, unless they deal with base defense and awareness, which have changed a lot. Check out our Backwards Compatibility page to be sure.

What is coming next for Suncrash and Judgment?

With the launch of 16.1 we have addressed many of the immediate kinks and bugs that remained post-launch. We will continue to monitor and identify any urgent issues that require immediate attention.

Aside from that, our plan is to work on a longer-term content update. These last months before and after the release were very intense and we need to unwind. We expect the next big content update to be at least a few months away, as we work in a more relaxed manner, and in parallel we will begin to think about and plan our next game. Yes, there is a next game in Suncrash's future, we hope that makes you happy and that you will join us in our next adventure as well. We still don't know what it will be, we are brainstorming, prototyping, testing, and researching. Our current goal is to decide on what the next project will be.

As always, if you haven’t already, we invite you to join our ever-lively Discord server. It’s a great experience to be able to talk to you guys directly. See you there!

Full Patch Notes
•   Mechanics: Replaced the awareness system with a simpler one. Awareness now grows at a daily rate of 10 + 2 per survivor, and bonuses that reduce this rate do so at an absolute value, instead of the exponential, percent based system we used to have. The minimum rate is 8/day (attack every 12 days or so) and maximum 60/day (attack every 1.8 days).
•   Mechanics: Demon attacks now happen when awareness reaches 100, so they are easier to predict and less confusing. Demons will no longer attack at less than 100% (except for special events). Attack difficulty now only depends on the day, and awareness now only affects the rate of attacks and not the difficulty.
•   Mechanics: Removed awareness gain from the custom difficulty settings. The rate of increase will now be affected by the attack frequency setting.
•   Usability: Added the ability to reserve resources that will not be used by auto crafting. Very useful to reserve water for drinking instead of using them all to craft bread, for example.
•   Usability: Added an option to skip the Combat Summary screen after fights.
•   Usability: Added a button (Left Control by default) to buy/sell/craft 100 items at once.
•   Usability: Added the option to search for "Special Locations" in the world map, making it easier to find campaign or random event quest locations.
•   Usability: Items that grant skills will now describe the effects of that skill in the item's description, so you can decide whether it's worth buying or not.
•   Usability: A new "tip" message appears when relevant. When building it explains how to rotate or build multiple objects, and when crafting/trading it explains how to buy/sell/craft x10 or x100.
•   Usability: Added some more explanations of where some items can be gathered in their descriptions.
•   Usability: Added a disband button on taskforces, that is enabled when the taskforce is in your base. You can still disband by removing all survivors from the taskforce as well, like before.
•   Usability: Added a button that will let you equip survivors in the Colony Management window. This will open a window similar to the one you get before being attacked, where you can see all survivors with their equipment and quickly change it.
•   Usability: The game will now resume the same speed it was before combat, when the combat is finished.
•   Usability: After a combat in the world map, if the world map was displayed before the fight, the taskforce will be automatically selected so you can quickly scavenge many locations one after another without having to reselect.
•   Usability: Survivors will continue moving towards their destinations after combat starts, if they were ordered to move somewhere before. This includes activating the defense plan.
•   Usability: You can now assign survivors to defensive towers as part of the defense plan. When the plan is activated, they will wait outside the tower, and will automatically enter it once the combat begins.
•   Usability: Selecting another survivor when the "select equipment" window is open will update the window for the newly selected survivor, and choosing an item will equip that new survivor.
•   Usability: Manual assigning a survivor to craft something will now keep them assigned to it for as long as more items of that type are queued, instead of just crafting one like before.
•   Usability: Can now assign more than one survivor manually to craft the same type of item without replacing the previous survivors, as long as there are enough of this items queued for crafting.
•   Content: Added a new tier 4 bow and several new high-tier pistols, since those were a bit under represented.
•   Content: Added several new achievements.
•   Balancing: Improved "Punching Bag" special skill a little bit.
•   Balancing: Made the "Scouting" +1 range skill a separate one from that of Marksmanship, so a survivor can have both.
•   Balancing: Repel evil now reduces the awareness increase rate by a set percent for a limited time, instead of reducing the awareness value. This is to prevent players from abusing this ritual and avoiding attacks forever, given the new system in which demons will only attack when awareness reaches 100.
•   Balancing: Attempting a rescue no longer has a one-time increase of awareness by an absolute amount like before.
•   Fixed Bug: Game states could become corrupted, keeping a combat region in memory with the survivors that participated in that combat. When that region would later be deleted, the survivors were deleted with it, breaking the game completely. Survivors will no longer be deleted with regions.
•   Fixed Bug: When a random event activated at the exact same time as scavenge combat, the scavenge screen would close but the game would keep thinking that the combat is on, making any additional combat impossible until reloading. Saving the game at this state created the corrupted save described above.
•   Fixed Bug: Mods with map sizes larger than 100 high would not display correctly.
•   Fixed Bug: Some typos and fixed Russian text that would say "+100%" range instead of "+1".
•   Fixed Bug: Area healing effects will no longer affect dead survivors.
•   Fixed Bug: Gather limits on herbs will no longer affect companion farms, since those provide other resources as well. For now companion farms will not be affected by gathering limits at all, because the system does not support a building that generates multiple items.
•   Fixed Bug: When survivors go to positions in preparation for an attack, it will no longer cancel their manual assignments.
•   Fixed Bug: Resources should no longer spawn in the map edges, where you can't build a mine on top of them.
•   Fixed Bug: Where it showed an empty window when clicking the mission button in the intro battle right after killing the enemies (during the short pause before more enemies arrive).
•   Fixed Bug: Attempt to fix some rare codec/graphics driver related crashes when playing videos (this would cause the game to crash on start on these systems, when attempting to play the logo videos).

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Re: Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
« Reply #29 on: October 26, 2018, 02:51:13 PM »
Judgment Status Update
Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation - Suncrash



Survivors,

It’s been a while since you last heard from us, so this post is to let you know what we’ve been up to, and our plans for the future.

Since our first post-launch patch, Update 16.1, we’ve taken a break from working on Judgment. Some of us went on vacations, some of us had new babies born, and even moved to different countries. We did manage to get some work done as well. Yes, we started brainstorming, prototyping, and testing ideas for our next game. We’re not quite ready to reveal it just yet, however, I can say that it won’t be a sequel to Judgment or happening in the Judgment universe. It will also be a strategy game though.

So what about Judgment? Well, next week we’re going to Gamescom (PM us on Discord if you want to meet up!), and after that - we’re going to start working on Judgment’s first major post-release update.

We’re still not ready to give exact details on what it will include, but we can say that plan for it to be a larger update, that includes not only bug fixes and quality of life improvements, but also new content. And the best part - we’re also planning to add a new game mode! If all goes as planned, this new mode will change several factors of how you play the game, and let even veteran players enjoy a new challenge.

We expect the update to be ready in a couple of months. We won’t be working exclusively on Judgment, we’re also proceeding with the pre-production of our next game, and hopefully by the time this update is ready, we will also be ready to announce it.

As always, we will keep tab on all your suggestions in the suggestion thread and our Discord server, and choose those that fit our schedule and vision to add to the next update. So keep them coming!
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