81
Cry Havoc! and let slip the dogs of war
Translations for our friends around the world.
Recent Posts
82
Games Discussion / Re: War and Peace by Avalon Digital
« Last post by Asid on March 13, 2024, 12:03:38 AM »Updates 1.3.9, 1.3.10, 1.3.11, 1.3.12
Update 1.3.12
11 Mar 2024
Spanish language
Bug fixes:
- the siege value was incremented twice a turn.
- A leader was wrongly bringing its supply line to the hex it is moving to
- The production view was a little horizontal offset on large screen
Update 1.3.10 & 1.3.11
2 March 2024
AI attack improvement
Bug fixes:
- Spanish scenarios: a partisan just arrived outside a city was not able to move this turn.
- Undoing production placement.
- Grand Campaign: miscellaneous Production fixes.
- Fixed a risk of duplicated reinforcement after an undo
Peninsula War
- Large French reinforcement of 1808 displayed on 2 rows.
Update 1.3.9
23 Feb 2024
Grand Campign fixes
- Removed the warning for the absence of movement if France is neutral
- Production of neutral MP
Struggle of Nations: some Russian units were illegally entrenched at the beginning of each turn
Update 1.3.12
11 Mar 2024
Spanish language
Bug fixes:
- the siege value was incremented twice a turn.
- A leader was wrongly bringing its supply line to the hex it is moving to
- The production view was a little horizontal offset on large screen
Update 1.3.10 & 1.3.11
2 March 2024
AI attack improvement
Bug fixes:
- Spanish scenarios: a partisan just arrived outside a city was not able to move this turn.
- Undoing production placement.
- Grand Campaign: miscellaneous Production fixes.
- Fixed a risk of duplicated reinforcement after an undo
Peninsula War
- Large French reinforcement of 1808 displayed on 2 rows.
Update 1.3.9
23 Feb 2024
Grand Campign fixes
- Removed the warning for the absence of movement if France is neutral
- Production of neutral MP
Struggle of Nations: some Russian units were illegally entrenched at the beginning of each turn
83
Games Discussion / Re: Dawn of Man
« Last post by Asid on March 13, 2024, 12:03:32 AM »Version 1.8.2 experimental
Tue, 12 March 2024
Maintenance update
Hello all,
We finally have some time now, after releasing The Mobius Machine, and wanted to release this maintenance update to fix a couple of pending issues.
To download this version, in the Steam client, in the library, right click on Dawn of Man, then select Properties > Betas, then in Beta Participation
select Experimental.
Changes
- On Windows, the game now detects if the user has changed the mouse pointer size in the system and adjusts the position of tooltips accordingly, to avoid the cursor overlapping the text. This is a fix for the issue reported here. https://steamcommunity.com/app/858810/discussions/2/2794999097687932328/?snr=2_groupannouncements_detail_
- Updated to latest Unity 2022.3.21, this we hope will fix the issue of some Mac players not being able to click. Reported here. https://steamcommunity.com/app/858810/discussions/2/4036976402232936566/?snr=2_groupannouncements_detail_
We are looking forward to any feedback.
Thanks for supporting Dawn of Man!
Martiño.
Tue, 12 March 2024
Maintenance update
Hello all,
We finally have some time now, after releasing The Mobius Machine, and wanted to release this maintenance update to fix a couple of pending issues.
To download this version, in the Steam client, in the library, right click on Dawn of Man, then select Properties > Betas, then in Beta Participation
select Experimental.
Changes
- On Windows, the game now detects if the user has changed the mouse pointer size in the system and adjusts the position of tooltips accordingly, to avoid the cursor overlapping the text. This is a fix for the issue reported here. https://steamcommunity.com/app/858810/discussions/2/2794999097687932328/?snr=2_groupannouncements_detail_
- Updated to latest Unity 2022.3.21, this we hope will fix the issue of some Mac players not being able to click. Reported here. https://steamcommunity.com/app/858810/discussions/2/4036976402232936566/?snr=2_groupannouncements_detail_
We are looking forward to any feedback.
Thanks for supporting Dawn of Man!
Martiño.
84
Games Discussion / Re: Cogmind
« Last post by Asid on March 12, 2024, 12:02:02 AM »Cogmind Expansion, Price Increase "Coming Soon"
Mon, 11 March 2024
It's finally time! For 1.0? No, of course not (that we hit it back in 2017 is just a poorly kept secret), what I mean is raising the price to better reflect what Cogmind is: hundreds of hours of content and lovingly-crafted roguelike adventure and storytelling. I don't explicitly advertise the worldbuilding's diversity and surprises, since that is best left to discovery, but it's been enough to challenge and entertain some folks for even thousands of hours. (Cogmind's screenshots represent only a small fraction of what you'll really find out there, for the reality you'd have to check out spoiler sections of the community, or some videos/streams.)
And the scope continues to grow.
I've dedicated more than the past decade of my life to full-time development of Cogmind. Just me, since it's not like this could support additional folks--it can only barely cover frugal old me
. I will hopefully, likely, continue to do so for the next couple years. Content is planned out even beyond that, but who knows if it will still be sustainable by then?
That said, as stated before I've never wanted to declare 1.0 then release all my expansions as DLC. Even though that technically makes a lot of business sense and would be significantly more sustainable, I think it leads to a worse player and community experience overall. Instead, I chose to start a Patreon some years ago to help keep the lights on. Although paling in comparison to what DLC would bring in, that has worked out well enough, so once again a special thanks to all of you patrons!
To the point at hand, Cogmind's price will be going up next month. There's only a relatively small window within which to do this without conflicting with other Steam events, and that period is April, so April it is. The new base price will be set to $24.99, and no don't expect that to mean deeper discounts going forward. The price isn't being raised to allow for greater discounts, it's being raised simply to raise the price
Some may question the idea of a price increase during "Early Access," but don't worry, the price will likely go up again (!) later and Cogmind isn't really
Early Access, anyway, we're waaaay past that. Yes that label does keep some people from buying in since they're skeptical of anything marked EA, an unfortunate side effect of all the poorly planned or executed projects that don't manage it well. Cogmind could've completely skipped Early Access to begin with, or stop development at any point, and be fine in terms of completion.* (Cogmind was publicly released for over two years before coming to Steam in the first place! The date on the Steam page is not Cogmind's actual release date, though many informational sites will assume and repeat that...) We'll open the gates to those folks eventually, but the next couple themed expansions cover at least four more betas
before that's even a consideration. The third still-to-come major expansion could be released before or after that threshold (still undecided), it's essentially just a pure marketing decision when to use the "1.0" label.
*that said, I'm super happy, as I'm sure others are, that we've finally been in development long enough, with enough new QoL and engine features, to support map zooming and full UI upscaling--that was BIG
Some historical metrics, for context:
For more historical info and graphs, you can also check out my annual reviews, one from each year for the past 10 years so far.
As for the next expansion, to focus on an important new location, it has technically already begun in part as a portion of Beta 13, and much more than that was completed last year, but that version detoured off into the map zoom and UI upscaling features arena so that more people could join us on this ongoing journey. With all of the new folks on board now, it's time to get this train steaming into exciting new territory again.
We're soon to increase the number of items in Cogmind by nearly 7%, a nice chunk considering we're already over 1,000, along with new maps, new factions, new abilities, yet another large increase in the number of encounters... the works. It'll be like Cogmind alpha content injections all over again, said in the strongest attempting-to-contain-my-hype tone possible
So yeah, in summary, price going up next month, and fun new releases coming, too, but... those not quite next month. They won't take forever, though--we'll be seeing somewhat faster releases down the line!
Oh yeah and there's still one more discount coming up later this week, so before the increase in price.
Memestrike
Since even after using an abbreviated version of the Beta 13 release notes we still hit Steam's length limit, I didn't have a chance to append any community stuff to our last announcement, so I'll just do that here...
MrMesh shared this wicked painting of a Cogmind scene--such a lively piece that also captures some great details! (via Roguelikes/Cogmind Discord)
A pair of awesome meme videos also dropped recently, including one titled "The Cogmind Beta 13 Experience" by Youngster (not very spoilery, but fun and nicely done!) and another dubbed "Cogmind Slander" by u/dogawesome, which is a good summary of a lot of Cogmind experiences, and in that sense it contains a lot of spoilers, but
probably makes relatively little sense to anyone who hasn't actually played, or moreover played a lot. There's a huge number of lore and content references in there though, for those who can relate
After releasing some patches for Beta 13, I also streamed the late-game portion of a run I had started on my own. It was fairly chaotic as usual, by choice
Some map-wide sterilization may have occurred prior to the start of the stream, and we know that in Cogmind destruction often begets ever greater levels of destruction, so yeah, continued remodeling was in the cards for a while.
We later used a hidden spoiler area to switch to 100% stealth for the remainder of the run (okay, except for the times our friends murdered everyone...)
That run was able to temporarily take 6th place since the leaderboards were reset for Beta 13, but has already been pushed down to 10th as more folks finish up their first runs with the new version, and at only 64k will probably not even sit within the top 20 for too long
Mon, 11 March 2024
It's finally time! For 1.0? No, of course not (that we hit it back in 2017 is just a poorly kept secret), what I mean is raising the price to better reflect what Cogmind is: hundreds of hours of content and lovingly-crafted roguelike adventure and storytelling. I don't explicitly advertise the worldbuilding's diversity and surprises, since that is best left to discovery, but it's been enough to challenge and entertain some folks for even thousands of hours. (Cogmind's screenshots represent only a small fraction of what you'll really find out there, for the reality you'd have to check out spoiler sections of the community, or some videos/streams.)
And the scope continues to grow.
I've dedicated more than the past decade of my life to full-time development of Cogmind. Just me, since it's not like this could support additional folks--it can only barely cover frugal old me
. I will hopefully, likely, continue to do so for the next couple years. Content is planned out even beyond that, but who knows if it will still be sustainable by then?That said, as stated before I've never wanted to declare 1.0 then release all my expansions as DLC. Even though that technically makes a lot of business sense and would be significantly more sustainable, I think it leads to a worse player and community experience overall. Instead, I chose to start a Patreon some years ago to help keep the lights on. Although paling in comparison to what DLC would bring in, that has worked out well enough, so once again a special thanks to all of you patrons!
To the point at hand, Cogmind's price will be going up next month. There's only a relatively small window within which to do this without conflicting with other Steam events, and that period is April, so April it is. The new base price will be set to $24.99, and no don't expect that to mean deeper discounts going forward. The price isn't being raised to allow for greater discounts, it's being raised simply to raise the price
Some may question the idea of a price increase during "Early Access," but don't worry, the price will likely go up again (!) later and Cogmind isn't really
Early Access, anyway, we're waaaay past that. Yes that label does keep some people from buying in since they're skeptical of anything marked EA, an unfortunate side effect of all the poorly planned or executed projects that don't manage it well. Cogmind could've completely skipped Early Access to begin with, or stop development at any point, and be fine in terms of completion.* (Cogmind was publicly released for over two years before coming to Steam in the first place! The date on the Steam page is not Cogmind's actual release date, though many informational sites will assume and repeat that...) We'll open the gates to those folks eventually, but the next couple themed expansions cover at least four more betas
before that's even a consideration. The third still-to-come major expansion could be released before or after that threshold (still undecided), it's essentially just a pure marketing decision when to use the "1.0" label.
*that said, I'm super happy, as I'm sure others are, that we've finally been in development long enough, with enough new QoL and engine features, to support map zooming and full UI upscaling--that was BIG
Some historical metrics, for context:
For more historical info and graphs, you can also check out my annual reviews, one from each year for the past 10 years so far.
As for the next expansion, to focus on an important new location, it has technically already begun in part as a portion of Beta 13, and much more than that was completed last year, but that version detoured off into the map zoom and UI upscaling features arena so that more people could join us on this ongoing journey. With all of the new folks on board now, it's time to get this train steaming into exciting new territory again.
We're soon to increase the number of items in Cogmind by nearly 7%, a nice chunk considering we're already over 1,000, along with new maps, new factions, new abilities, yet another large increase in the number of encounters... the works. It'll be like Cogmind alpha content injections all over again, said in the strongest attempting-to-contain-my-hype tone possible
So yeah, in summary, price going up next month, and fun new releases coming, too, but... those not quite next month
. They won't take forever, though--we'll be seeing somewhat faster releases down the line!Oh yeah and there's still one more discount coming up later this week, so before the increase in price.
Memestrike
Since even after using an abbreviated version of the Beta 13 release notes we still hit Steam's length limit, I didn't have a chance to append any community stuff to our last announcement, so I'll just do that here...
MrMesh shared this wicked painting of a Cogmind scene--such a lively piece that also captures some great details! (via Roguelikes/Cogmind Discord)
A pair of awesome meme videos also dropped recently, including one titled "The Cogmind Beta 13 Experience" by Youngster (not very spoilery, but fun and nicely done!) and another dubbed "Cogmind Slander" by u/dogawesome, which is a good summary of a lot of Cogmind experiences, and in that sense it contains a lot of spoilers, but
probably makes relatively little sense to anyone who hasn't actually played, or moreover played a lot. There's a huge number of lore and content references in there though, for those who can relate
After releasing some patches for Beta 13, I also streamed the late-game portion of a run I had started on my own. It was fairly chaotic as usual, by choice
Some map-wide sterilization may have occurred prior to the start of the stream, and we know that in Cogmind destruction often begets ever greater levels of destruction, so yeah, continued remodeling was in the cards for a while.
We later used a hidden spoiler area to switch to 100% stealth for the remainder of the run (okay, except for the times our friends murdered everyone...)
That run was able to temporarily take 6th place since the leaderboards were reset for Beta 13, but has already been pushed down to 10th as more folks finish up their first runs with the new version, and at only 64k will probably not even sit within the top 20 for too long
85
Games Discussion / Re: Black One Blood Brothers
« Last post by Asid on March 12, 2024, 12:01:46 AM »Preview 1.49: New Maps, Video Mode, Gameplay Enhancements
Mon, 11 March 2024
Dear operatives,
We are thrilled to present the upcoming update for Black One Blood Brothers, featuring two unique new maps and numerous gameplay and interface enhancements.
Mall of Eden
In this mission, your special forces team will face a unique challenge: liberating a giant shopping center seized by determined terrorists. You'll navigate through labyrinthine floors, minimizing civilian casualties while neutralizing the threat
The Mines
Dive into the heart of a dense forest where the remnants of an old mine hide the headquarters of an enemy group. Among abandoned buildings and dilapidated structures, your team must navigate cautiously to capture or eliminate enemy leaders. Natural covers offer unique tactical opportunities but also pose high risks of ambushes.
New Video Mode
This groundbreaking update introduces a brand-new video mode, giving players the ability to switch to free camera mode and record unique gameplay sequences. With a specially designed cinema camera, players can capture epic moments of their gaming experience from the perspectives and angles they choose. Whether it's creating impressive videos to share with the community or reliving their most memorable moments, this new video mode adds a new dimension to the Black One Blood Brothers experience.
Gameplay Enhancements
This update brings a plethora of gameplay and interface enhancements for a more immersive and engaging experience. Weapon handling animations have been reworked for a realistic and fluid feel. The artificial intelligence has been enhanced to offer more responsive and strategic opponents. Game menus have also been optimized. Many other improvements, such as balance adjustments, bug fixes, and performance optimizations, are included to ensure a top-tier gaming experience for all players.
Get ready!
Helios
Mon, 11 March 2024
Dear operatives,
We are thrilled to present the upcoming update for Black One Blood Brothers, featuring two unique new maps and numerous gameplay and interface enhancements.
Mall of Eden
In this mission, your special forces team will face a unique challenge: liberating a giant shopping center seized by determined terrorists. You'll navigate through labyrinthine floors, minimizing civilian casualties while neutralizing the threat
The Mines
Dive into the heart of a dense forest where the remnants of an old mine hide the headquarters of an enemy group. Among abandoned buildings and dilapidated structures, your team must navigate cautiously to capture or eliminate enemy leaders. Natural covers offer unique tactical opportunities but also pose high risks of ambushes.
New Video Mode
This groundbreaking update introduces a brand-new video mode, giving players the ability to switch to free camera mode and record unique gameplay sequences. With a specially designed cinema camera, players can capture epic moments of their gaming experience from the perspectives and angles they choose. Whether it's creating impressive videos to share with the community or reliving their most memorable moments, this new video mode adds a new dimension to the Black One Blood Brothers experience.
Gameplay Enhancements
This update brings a plethora of gameplay and interface enhancements for a more immersive and engaging experience. Weapon handling animations have been reworked for a realistic and fluid feel. The artificial intelligence has been enhanced to offer more responsive and strategic opponents. Game menus have also been optimized. Many other improvements, such as balance adjustments, bug fixes, and performance optimizations, are included to ensure a top-tier gaming experience for all players.
Get ready!
Helios
86
Games Discussion / Re: Distant Worlds 2
« Last post by Asid on March 11, 2024, 07:39:31 PM »Distant Worlds 2 - Feature Stellar Update
Mon, 11 March 2024
Ship Design and Research Priority Policies
Hello everyone and thank you for your interest in Distant Worlds 2!
One of the principles of Distant Worlds 2 from the start has been to add more “guided automation” to find a better middle ground for players between full manual play and fully automated play. Ship Design and Research are two of the key areas where we heard a great deal of feedback from players who wanted more guided automation.
In Ship Design, players have the option to fully automate this area, design all of their ships manually, or mix things up by assigning some ship roles to manual design and keeping others automated. The fully automated and mix and match players wanted more influence over how those automated designs looked and we agreed that this would be a good thing.
In order to fully achieve this goal, we also needed a way to better guide research (when it is automated) because the ships and bases that you can design depend in large part on the research you have done in terms of what components are available to you. It made sense to connect the two systems in order to achieve the desired end result.
We added an entirely new section to the Empire Polices to accomplish this goal and you can see a screenshot of that section above.
There are tooltips in the game to help explain the choices, but I will summarize how the system works here. For close-in weapons and stand-off weapons, you can choose a weapon category to prefer for research prioritization and ship design.
The automation will then focus your weapon research in those weapon categories and use those weapons in its automated designs. When a faction has a faction-unique component within these categories, it will be further preferred and weighted for research and design.
For example, you can see in the Mortalen ship below, that it has Blasters and Torpedoes as the preferences state, but in the choice of which Torpedo to use, the automation has researched and included the Mortalen-unique Pulse Torpedo.
There are other categories where the player can also choose the priority of a particular weapon type, which ship role should be the smallest to try to fit those weapon types in its designs and even state that he does not want that type of weapon used at all to free up space for other priorities.
For example, see the screenshot below of the choices for Ion Weapons. These three options give you maximum flexibility – if you don’t want Ion weapons on your ships at all, or you do want them but only on your Battleships, or you want lots of Ion weapons on all of your ships, you can achieve that through these automation policies. The same flexibility now applies to Intercept Weapons (Point Defense and Fighter weapons), Area Weapons and Bombard weapons.
Near the bottom of this new policy section are a few sections that are not about weapons. The first deals with Fighters and as with the above lets you pick how much you would like to prioritize Fighter Bays on your designs and which should be the smallest ship role with Starfighters.
The rest give you some choices on Reactors, Shields, Hyperdrives and Engines. In each of these component areas, the research tree offers you different paths. For example, you can see below the choices for Hyperdrives – you can choose to focus on Energy Efficiency, Jump Initiation Time or Speed. In the game, these are represented by the Kaldos, Calista-Dal and Equinox hyperdrive branches. Once you’ve picked one of these preferences, it will guide your automated research and design to focus on those components without manual involvement.
We plan to build on this system further in the future, adding additional preferences for Fighter designs and Civilian ship and base designs, as well as other requests the community may have.
We hope this feature review helps you understand how to use these new policies and that they make your time in Distant Worlds 2 more enjoyable!
Mon, 11 March 2024
Ship Design and Research Priority Policies
Hello everyone and thank you for your interest in Distant Worlds 2!
One of the principles of Distant Worlds 2 from the start has been to add more “guided automation” to find a better middle ground for players between full manual play and fully automated play. Ship Design and Research are two of the key areas where we heard a great deal of feedback from players who wanted more guided automation.
In Ship Design, players have the option to fully automate this area, design all of their ships manually, or mix things up by assigning some ship roles to manual design and keeping others automated. The fully automated and mix and match players wanted more influence over how those automated designs looked and we agreed that this would be a good thing.
In order to fully achieve this goal, we also needed a way to better guide research (when it is automated) because the ships and bases that you can design depend in large part on the research you have done in terms of what components are available to you. It made sense to connect the two systems in order to achieve the desired end result.
We added an entirely new section to the Empire Polices to accomplish this goal and you can see a screenshot of that section above.
There are tooltips in the game to help explain the choices, but I will summarize how the system works here. For close-in weapons and stand-off weapons, you can choose a weapon category to prefer for research prioritization and ship design.
The automation will then focus your weapon research in those weapon categories and use those weapons in its automated designs. When a faction has a faction-unique component within these categories, it will be further preferred and weighted for research and design.
For example, you can see in the Mortalen ship below, that it has Blasters and Torpedoes as the preferences state, but in the choice of which Torpedo to use, the automation has researched and included the Mortalen-unique Pulse Torpedo.
There are other categories where the player can also choose the priority of a particular weapon type, which ship role should be the smallest to try to fit those weapon types in its designs and even state that he does not want that type of weapon used at all to free up space for other priorities.
For example, see the screenshot below of the choices for Ion Weapons. These three options give you maximum flexibility – if you don’t want Ion weapons on your ships at all, or you do want them but only on your Battleships, or you want lots of Ion weapons on all of your ships, you can achieve that through these automation policies. The same flexibility now applies to Intercept Weapons (Point Defense and Fighter weapons), Area Weapons and Bombard weapons.
Near the bottom of this new policy section are a few sections that are not about weapons. The first deals with Fighters and as with the above lets you pick how much you would like to prioritize Fighter Bays on your designs and which should be the smallest ship role with Starfighters.
The rest give you some choices on Reactors, Shields, Hyperdrives and Engines. In each of these component areas, the research tree offers you different paths. For example, you can see below the choices for Hyperdrives – you can choose to focus on Energy Efficiency, Jump Initiation Time or Speed. In the game, these are represented by the Kaldos, Calista-Dal and Equinox hyperdrive branches. Once you’ve picked one of these preferences, it will guide your automated research and design to focus on those components without manual involvement.
We plan to build on this system further in the future, adding additional preferences for Fighter designs and Civilian ship and base designs, as well as other requests the community may have.
We hope this feature review helps you understand how to use these new policies and that they make your time in Distant Worlds 2 more enjoyable!
87
Mius Front / Re: Mius Front: Patches/Updates
« Last post by Asid on March 10, 2024, 08:43:20 PM »Update 03/10/2024
Sun, March 10, 2024
The game is moving to an updated operational phase system. 1x1 km cells will become a thing of the past, the seizure of territory will proceed node by node, with all the ensuing changes in the operational and tactical phases of the game. Such a significant change will result in the disappearance of signs of entrenchment, and other less significant changes in active operations.
The principle of troop deployment before battle will also change; the areas in which deployment is available will be reduced and tied to the location of the battle group on the operational map.
The algorithm for accounting for the level of fire has also been adjusted, various small changes have been made to various aspects of the game and the display of special effects.
Sun, March 10, 2024
The game is moving to an updated operational phase system. 1x1 km cells will become a thing of the past, the seizure of territory will proceed node by node, with all the ensuing changes in the operational and tactical phases of the game. Such a significant change will result in the disappearance of signs of entrenchment, and other less significant changes in active operations.
The principle of troop deployment before battle will also change; the areas in which deployment is available will be reduced and tied to the location of the battle group on the operational map.
The algorithm for accounting for the level of fire has also been adjusted, various small changes have been made to various aspects of the game and the display of special effects.
88
Support / Command Panel left
« Last post by Agent Smith on March 09, 2024, 12:17:58 PM »When changing the command panel to the left of screen, the map scroll regions are oddly located and the top scroll region is non-functional.
89
World War II Europe 1939-1945 / Re: WWII-Europe Campaign Scenario #102 Update
« Last post by Agent Smith on March 09, 2024, 11:22:21 AM »Hello Ron,
Any chance of a status update?
Thanks in advance.
Regards
A.
Any chance of a status update?
Thanks in advance.
Regards
A.
90
Mission Discussion/AAR's / Re: D.O.W. Steel Beasts Wednesday Mission 6/3/24 @ GMT18:00
« Last post by Asid on March 08, 2024, 12:34:38 AM »D.O.W. Steel Beasts Wednesday Mission 6/3/24