Alpha 1.8 is now live and it features the following:
* Revamped Survival Loop:
For this update we wanted to return to our roots and make the survival experience as meaningful as possible. A big part of that is in how the needs logic works, but more specifically the UI and feedback portion.
New UI: You will notice a change to the needs UI on the bottom left. Needs now have different states, which can be seen through the change of color, animation and other feedback sources.
Needs logic: Needs are now more robust, with varying depletion rates when you sleep, in hot/cold weather, and exertion.
Stamina bar: Stamina is now more short term but also regenerates. As you attack, chop trees or sprint, stamina will deplete at various rates, but you need only stop for a little to allow it to regenerate. Be aware that stamina has an effect on Rest, which will be explained next. Be wary of charging head first into your enemies!
Rest: The need for sleep, this determines how long you can stay up before getting negative status effects. The more you exert yourself the more sleep you will need, so make sure to pace yourselves.
Negative/Positive status effects: All active effects on the player will now be shown on the lower left of the screen. We are still adding effects as we go, certain effects such as Sun-burnt will have a persistent negative effect on the player. Additionally certain items will incur a positive effect as well, mostly from consuming items. More effects will be added in the next update.
* Gameplay Features:
Bows and crossbows of different types are now available as a stealth option with craft-able arrows that stick into their targets and can be picked up again.
Ability to equip fire torches in hand.
Player Slots System where you can drag and drop items on different slots on the character in the inventory screen such as belts, upper body, head, accessories, etc...
(Coming in Alpha 1.9)
* Quest System Improvements:
Chained Quests
Main/Side Quests
Quest Items
Clarify Active/Completed Quests
More Quest Types
Optional Introductory Tutorial Quest that walks you through the game mechanics.
* AI Improvements:
While we did our best to include the following features in Alpha 1.8 we came to the conclusion that they need more time for development and polish to really shine and so we are moving those to the next release:
You will be able to attack civilians and domestic animals in villages and bedouin camps. This was previously disabled as civilians weren't able to defend themselves, but now they will cower or run away from you if you point your weapon at them.
Armed civilians will exist in villages and bedouin camps and will attack you if you attack them first.
AI opponents will be able to get out of the Points of Interest they are in to chase after the player.
Plus many other tweaks and fixes!
Best Regards from the whole Semaphore team!
@semaphorelab
www.semaphorelab.com
Alpha 1.8 Preview
Hello everyone,
Badiya has won the "Best Arab Game" award at the annual True-Gaming award show which was held in Dammam, Saudi Arabia earlier in March. We are very grateful for your continued support of the game and we promise you that the best is yet to come.
So we wanted to share with you the features coming up in Alpha 1.8 in April.
* Survival Loop:
For this update we wanted to return to our roots and make the survival experience as meaningful as possible. A big part of that is in how the needs logic works, but more specifically the UI and feedback portion.
New UI: You will notice a change to the needs UI on the bottom right. Needs now have different states, which can be seen through the change of color, animation and other feedback sources.
Revamped needs logic: Needs are now more robust, with varying depletion rates when you sleep, in hot/cold weather, and exertion.
Stamina bar: Stamina is now more short term but also regenerates. As you attack, chop trees or sprint, stamina will deplete at various rates, but you need only stop for a little to allow it to regenerate. Be aware that stamina has an effect on Rest, which will be explained next. Be wary of charging head first into your enemies!
Rest: The need for sleep, this determines how long you can stay up before getting negative status effects. The more you exert yourself the more sleep you will need, so make sure to pace yourselves.
Negative/Positive status effects: All active effects on the player will now be shown on the lower left of the screen. We are still adding effects as we go, certain effects such as Sun-burnt will have a persistent negative effect on the player. Additionally certain items will incur a positive effect as well, mostly from consuming items. More effects will be added in the next update.
* Gameplay Features:
Crossbow as a stealth option with craft-able arrows that stick into their targets and can be picked up again.
Ability to equip fire torches in hand.
Ability to throw any equipped item/grenade
Player Slots System where you can drag and drop items on different slots on the character in the inventory screen such as belts, upper body, head, accessories, etc...
* AI Improvements:
You can now attack civilians and domestic animals in villages and bedouin camps. This was previously disabled as civilians weren't able to defend themselves, but now they will cower or run away from you if you point your weapon at them.
Armed civilians exist now in villages and bedouin camps and will attack you if you attack them first.
AI opponents can now get out of the Points of Interest they are in to chase after the player.
Plus many other tweaks and fixes!
* Release Date:
We are currently wrapping up the development of these features and working on bug fixes and balancing in preparation for release which is expected mid April.
Best Regards from the whole Semaphore team!
@semaphorelab
www.semaphorelab.com
Alpha 1.7.2 is now Live!
Hello everyone,
We released our major release Alpha 1.7 which contains a lot of important features such as Quest System, Map System, Fast Travel Caravans, New Points of Interest and more. You can find the details here:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/545050/announcements/detail/1583444307582457219
Alpha 1.7.2 patch is now live and it features the following:
- Sped up horse and camel mounting/dismounting actions. You will feel its more intuitive now.
- Adjusted the max distance that POIs appear on the compass on top of the screen so you don't see too many of them..
- Fixed an issue that caused shadows to not appear on Ultra quality setting in some cases.
- Several minor bug fixes.
Alpha 1.7.1 is now Live!
Hello everyone,
Notes:
- If you like what we are doing please consider giving us a positive review in the game reviews section.
- Installing the game on a SSD drive is highly recommended for the best experience.
- The game defaults to "Medium" quality settings but you can change that from the Options-Graphics menu.
Alpha 1.7.1 is here and it aims to provide a more polished experience to the game across the following areas:
* Performance and Stability:
Major performance boost across all quality levels.
Overall game size went from 10 GB to 6 GB.
Options menu now offers full control over vSync and Frame Rate limit. By default both of them will be set to off but you should try to set frame rate limit to highest stabe number you are getting. For example if you keep getting 60-70 frames per second then it's best to set the limit to 60 so you get a constant stable 60. At that point you may consider turning vSync to 1 Frames to avoid screen tearing if you are getting it (but vSync has a performance cost so check if it's worth turning on or not).
Added additional graphical options such as "Anisotropic Filtering", "Soft Particles" and "View Distances"
Several bug fixes related to the quest system, map, fast travel, Saving/Loading and building system.
* Gameplay:
You can now cook meals in addition to items in through the "Cooking Station".
You can now build ground torches for your camp.
* User Interface:
On Controllers, the X button on Xbox Controller and Square button on PS4 controller are now used as the main interaction button instead of "Y/Triangle" to make it more in line with other open world games.
If you are using a PS4 controller, you will now see R1/R2/L1/L2 icons instead of "LB,RB,LT,RT".
When you salvage an item in your inventory you will get a confirmation dialog so you don't do it by mistake.
Removed "Salvage All" function from containers "chests/bodies/animals".
Easier switching between the inventories whenever two panels are shown on screen with a clear indicator to which panel is currently active.
Sub menu navigation through the keyboard now uses "z" and "x" instead of "[" and "]"
* Upcoming Features:
Armor (Head, Body, Foot) for both player and Enemies
Enemy AI Improvements
Gunplay aiming/feel Improvements
Gameplay balancing and improvements to avoid getting overpowered early in the game.
Loot boxes that are in dangerous places or require lock picking will have suitably valuable loot while loot boxes in safe locations or that are unlocked wont have valuable stuff.
Merchant Inventory specialization: Fruit merchant, weapon merchant, Cloth merchant as opposed to the random items that currently exists.
Multiple POI Difficulties
Game wide items balancing (Prices, Effect)
Temperature effect on player (Extreme heat and extreme cold)
Food intake to have an effect on the player (Getting fatter or thinner)
Enemy AI will have lower probability of dropping weapons
Buildable Ground Torches
Hello everyone,
With the update we released today you can now build fire torches in your camp (and salvage them later if you want) which will provide you with a limited but important range of vision during the dark of the night.
You can find this in the "Camp Basics" category in the Build menu.
We will be adding torches that you can equip and hold in your hands, the ability to hold a torch in your left hand and hold an item or shoot with the right hand as well as the ability to transfer fire from and to other torches in the future.
Alpha 1.7 is now Live!
Badiya Alpha 1.7 is here and it marks our one year anniversary on Steam Early Access and our biggest release yet. This is a game changer!
Notes:
- If you like what we are doing please consider giving us a positive review in the game reviews section.
- Installing the game on a SSD drive is highly recommended for the best experience.
- The game defaults to "Medium" quality settings but you can change that from the Options-Graphics menu.
* FEATURES:
- Map System with Fog of War: In the player menu we now added a new Map section that shows the game's map (also accessible by pressing M on the keyboard).
You can find the usual functions such as panning, setting destination marker, center on player, etc...
- New POI Compass: On top of the screen you can now see a new compass that shows you the direction and distance to each point of interest (will be presented by a question mark if it's not discovered yet, otherwise it will show you the POI icon).
Note that this compass only shows up if you have the Compass item in your inventory which now comes with all the different starter kits at the beginning of the game (Except the None preset which assumes you want to start with absolutely nothing in inventory. In which case you can acquire, buy or craft the compass).
- Quest System with several types of quests: This is perhaps the biggest addition to this release. You can now find Quest Giver NPCs marked with an exclamation mark on top of their heads. Interacting with them will show you the Quest dialog where you can find details about the quest, description, reward and the required objectives at which point you can accept or refuse the quest.
There is an infinite number of quests in the game and they are of several types that will require you to perform different tasks and will leave it up to you to discover them. We will be adding more quest types with every new release.
Once you accept a Quest you can inspect them in the Quests section in the player menu. From there you can track the different quests and show their objective location on map if they have any. The currently tracked quest will appear in the top right part of the screen so you can now what objectives to pursue.
Quest objectives will also appear on the POI compass on top of the screen.
- New terrain generation system with better distribution of Points of Interest: Now there will always be new places to discover the more you explore. We separated our Points of Interest to large ones with mini POIs scattered in between.
The new system ensures that there wont be repetition in POIs when you are exploring the world (Unless mandated by the design on purpose) and therefore there will always be something new for you to explore.
- Ambient AI Improvements: You will now see crowds talking to each other and to merchants
Crowds will now react to you aiming your weapons at them, if you continue raising your weapon they will attempt to run away. This is the base of a Crime and Reputation system that we will be adding later on which will make your actions toward factions affect your reputation with them and have gameplay consequences such as increasing your wanted level, the prices you get for trading and other features.
- Fast Travel System: We now have Caravans that contain fast travel NPCs (with a camel icon on top of them). Those NPCs will allow you to travel to bedouin camps or villages that you visited before.
Note that Fast Travel NPCs can also be found on other types of friendly POIs.
- Steam Achievements: You can now gain achievements for surviving longer in the game. We plan to add different types of achievements for the various game activities in upcoming updates.
- Steam Trading Cards: Those are coming up shortly. Stay tuned!
* CONTENT:
We added plenty of new points of interest to discover in this release. Raising the total to 30 so far and we plan to add more in the future:
Sheep Herder
Caravan
Bandit Camp
Explorer Camp
Traveller Camp
Hunter Camp
Merchant Camp
Iron Mine
Gold Mine
Copper Mine
Stone Deposit
Frankensence Tree Cluster
Silktree Cluster
Wheat Field
Green Field (Rawdha)
Palm Farm
Big Oasis
* GAMEPLAY IMPROVEMENTS:
The drop item button on the controller is now R3 (pressing the right thumb stick. While Pressing Circle/B button will close the inventory menu.
You can now build tents that look like the ones in the bedouin camp.
You can now eat herbs (previously they were only used to craft medical potions).
You can now chop down palm trees and collect wood, plant fibre and dates from them.
Each animal type now has a unique hide item.
You can now reload your weapon on a PS4/XBox One controller by pressing L3.
Photo Mode now requires pressing L3+R3 sticks on the controller at the same time (if photo mode is enabled from the pause menu).
Aiming Shoulder Switch is now done using L Alt key on the keyboard instead of the middle mouse button.
* Graphics:
New improved terrain textures: Game will now have a better desert look.
PCSS: Shadows get softer the farther they are from the source object that is casting it like in real life. This feature is tied to the "Ultra" quality setting and can be disabled manually from the graphics menu if needed.
Better look for Night time in terms of brightness and colors.
Better Eye Adaptation and sunlight intensity so that the overall image isn't overly bright.
* Numerous Bug Fixes:
We did a lot of bug fixing in different areas in the game. As usual if you encounter a crash or a bug, go to the game's folder and search for a file named "Output_log.txt" and send that to us on the email feedback@semaphorelab.com
This file tells us exactly what happened from the moment you ran the executable to when the crash or error happened and it will help us identify and fix the issue.
* Coming Up Next:
We will be releasing a few updates during the 1.7 life cycle that improve the gameplay, performance and any issues that need addressing. Some of the features to expect are;
Better combat AI behaviour
Better shooting mechanics
Difficulty level for hostile points of interest
Armor for enemy AI that is period accurate (also wearable by the player)
Gameplay balancing for item stats, merchant inventories and survival stats.
On behalf of the entire team at Semaphore. Thank you so much for a great first year on Steam Early Access. Our community is our fuel and you guys and girls are the best!
Ahmad Jadallah (@AhmadJadallah)
Director of Development
Semaphore (@SemaphoreLab)
www.semaphorelab.com
Badiya is now 50% OFF During The Winter Sale!
The game is currently 50% off for the Steam Winter Sale.
Thank you for your patience everyone. Our next major release Alpha 1.7 is coming this Monday.
In this series we take a sneak peak at the new features in Badiya Alpha 1.7 which is coming up later this month.
You now have the ability to fast travel through Camel Caravans to Points of Interest that you previously discovered on the map in return for a fee and travel time.
Developers Ask: What are the top three features you are missing in Badiya?
If you were to choose three features to be implemented in Badiya to make it a much better game what would they be? (Order according to importance please)
