Badiya: Desert Survival
Badiya Alpha 1.5 Status Update
We wanted to give you a status update on Alpha 1.5. As most of you know this update is our biggest yet and it brings some of the most requested features including:
- Combat AI: Enemies (bandits/soldiers) that guard most of the Points of Interest in the desert. We designed the system so that you can either fight them gun blazing or stealth your way through with stealth takedowns and body dragging to avoid detection.
- Building System: You can now start building your own camp and fill it with items such as tent, campfire, cooking station, crafting bench, processing station, smelting station, item storage boxes, water containers and others. Tents will be where you do manual saving now (no more auto save on quit)
- More animals: We added many new wild and prey animals to make the desert more alive and diverse. Wild animals will appear more at night and they can appear in packs so that makes the night more dangerous.
- Balanced the items and survival gameplay so that you have more items to collect that you can process to gain more valuable items to sell or use including different minerals (Gold Ore, Copper Ore, etc..). We even added more hardcore survival items such as a wooden knife, bone knife and a rock knife. Hunger and thirst meters are more forgiving now as well.
So the good news is that development is done and we even finished making the trailer that we usually do for every release. What's holding us now is simply bug fixes so that you get the best experience possible. We are dedicating this week for the final round of bug fixing and our target release is next week and we will update this thread with more info soon.
We would like to thank you for your continuous support and the best is yet to come for Badiya!
Best Regards,
Ahmad Jadallah
Director of Development
Semaphore
Twitter:
@SemaphoreLab
@AhmadJadallah
Alpha 1.4.2 live now with Hot bar, Compass and Photo Mode!
Note: If you like what we are doing, kindly leave us a positive review in the steam user reviews section. It really helps us :)
Badiya Alpha 1.4.2 is live now. Check out this video for a demonstration of the new features:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW0kHIhkUNE
* Hot Bar:
You can now drag inventory items to the bar at the bottom of the screen and press the corresponding key during gameplay for fast equipping or unequipping.
The are four open slots by default but you can extend that to eight slots if you wear a bedouin belt or a cannana belt.
* Compass:
Now if you have a compass in your inventory you can see it in the top right of the screen. You can obtain the compass by buying, looting or crafting.
* Photo Mode:
You can pause the game at any point using "P" which is rebindable or L3 (Click the Left Stick) on the controller, move the camera around to frame your shot, change color filters, control camera depth of field and field of view and then capture that perfect shot that you can share on social media or on steam screenshot gallery. In addition to still shots you can also capture 360 panoramas.
Captured shots can be viewed from Main Menu->Community->Photo Gallery
* Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug that disabled cloud shadows
- Fixed a bug that prevented playing of surface dependent footstep SFX (Sand, Rock, etc..)
- Fixed Item weight bug reported here (Thank you Owen153 for reporting it)
http://steamcommunity.com/app/545050/discussions/3/143388132204274539/
* Coming Up Next:
- Human Enemies (Mercenaries/Bandits) that will guard airports and ancient ruins
- Binoculars and Scopes
- More Wild Animals: Hyena, Jackal, Lynx, Arabian White Leopard
- Corpses in the desert that you can loot
- Camping (Crafting a tent to sleep in)
- Cooking (Crafting a fire place and then a cooking station to cook on)
- Crafting Bench (When built and placed, allows you to craft complicated items that cannot be crafted on the fly like all military weapons)
- New Point of Interest with underground tombs! Here is a sneak peak:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16222083/Badiya/ms1.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16222083/Badiya/ms2.jpg
Alpha 1.4.1 is Live!
Note: If you like what we are doing, kindly leave us a positive review in the steam user reviews section. It really helps us :)
Alpha 1.4.1 is now live and it fixes a couple of issues we had with last week's Alpha 1.4 which featured many frequently requested features and performance optimizations including:
* Saving the location of any vehicle and rideable animal:
You can now take a horse, camel, vehicle, tank and cross any distance with it. If you quit and load the game you will find it next to you along with its stats and inventory.
Keep in mind though that:
1- Vehicle upgrades cannot be saved currently (Will be fixed later)
2- The save will apply only to the last animal/vehicle you were riding (doesn't matter if you were in it or not)
For example, you take a horse from a bedouin camp and ride it a certain distance and leave it, then go back on foot to the camp and take a camel and go back to where you left the horse, only the camel and its inventory will be saved (if you wanted the horse you will ride it before you exit the game so that it is saved and not the camel). This is just temporary fix for now and later on we will work out a system that saves everything.
* Weather System fully upgraded:
We now support Volumetric Clouds, Thunder, Heat Haze and Solar Eclipse.
* Cinematic Temporal Anti Aliasing:
In addition to the existing FXAA and SMAA Antialiasing methods, we now introduced Cinematic Temporal Anti Aliasing. The benefit of it is that you won't get the flickering and shimmering effect usually seen in games on things like vegetation, grass and fences.
* Filmic Look:
We are using a new color grading and correction effect that will give the game a more filmic look. We will be experimenting with more styles in the future to see which one is more suitable for the game.
* Contact Shadows:
Contact Shadows add extra detailed shading on all models and vegetation that makes them feel more grounded and detailed. Currently they are tied to "High" and "Ultra" quality presets but can be turned on or off separately if needed.
Here are screenshots to show the effect in action. The first screen shot is without contact shadows and the second is with them
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16222083/Badiya/ss2.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16222083/Badiya/ss1.jpg
* Ammo Calibers:
Each weapon will now have it's own ammo caliber (The stats of the weapon should tell you what caliber it requires.
* Wolf:
Our first enemy in the game! Wolves will appear during the day but more at night. They are tough opponents that you don't want to mess with. Generally you should try to avoid them if you don't have enough health packs and weapons/ammo.
We will be adding more wild animal types soon.
* Key Rebinding:
You can now change the default keyboard/mouse assignment for each action.
* Big Improvements in performance:
You should expect at least 50% in performance increase across the board. Keep in mind however that optimization is an ongoing process. There are some known slow down locations (Riding vehicles, while terrain generation happens in the desert, in large crowded villages) and those are our next targets for optimization.
* Vehicles Balancing:
- Vehicles that you find will start with different health and fuel amounts. So you will pobably need to repair the vehicles using scrap metal or fuel it up before driving.
- Vehicles that you find will now have a limited amount of ammo. Once this depletes you have to put ammo in it through it's inventory (Face the vehicle and press the inventory button. This will open up double inventory, simple give .303 caliber ammo to to the vehicle inventory and it will be ready for use.
- There is now an overheating meter that will prevent firing infinitely.
- Increased the accuracy of the machine gun on tanks and vehicles.
* Smaller Fixes:
- Improved hand animations when walking and running with more relaxed arm and hand poses
- All weapon holding poses are now fixed
- Fixed Oasis Water Color
- Added a room in the airstrip that contains lootable boxes.
* Gameplay Tweaks:
In order to improve the quality and challenge of gameplay we made tweaks to Time of Day Progression Speed, Hunger, Thirst and Stamina Depletion, Fuel Consumption.
* Upcoming Planned Features:
<*> Hot Bar at the bottom of the screen to allow you quick access to to items you drag into it.
<*> Human Enemies (Soliders/Bandits) that will guard airports and ancient ruins.
<*> More Wild Animals: Hyena, Jackal, Lynx, Arabian White Leopard
<*> Corpses in the desert that you can loot
<*> Camping (Crafting a tent to sleep in)
<*> Cooking (Crafting a fire place and then a cooking station to cook on)
<*> Crafting Bench (When built and placed, allows you to craft complicated items that cannot be crafted on the fly like all military weapons)
<*> Tie crafting to recipes that you need to collect and learn throughout the world
<*> Shooting while on top of Horses and Camels
<*> Throwables: Any tool that you can hold in hands can be thrown. As well as grenades of course
<*> Weapons: Lewis Gun, Blunderbuss, Winchester Shotgun
<*> Agility: Jumping in place, jump forward, step up a small obstacle on foot, vaulting over fences
<*> Climbing Ladders in military camps and airports
<*> Further Optimizations: GPU Terrain Generation, GPU Instancing for vegetation.
* One more thing:
There are a few features that we would like to bring to light, they always existed (Since Alpha 1.0) but maybe were a bit hidden:
- You can enter aiming mode at any time even if you don't hold a weapon.
- You can press Middle Mouse Button while in aiming mode to switch the camera side.
- You can shoot and break all wood and rock objects.
- You can shoot rock and wooden fences in the villages.
- All lights in villages and bedouin tents can be shot down (and you can see them turn off at night).
- You can chop down trees and mine rocks using your axe.
- While driving the armored car, you can press L to activate the lights. You can exit the vehicle and shoot the light.
- You can drive the vehicles and tanks through metal fences in airports.
Patch 1.3.6 is Now Live
Patch 1.3.6 is now live and it features the following:
- A new fix for the issue of not being able to exit the inventory sometimes.
- Fixed the freeze that used to happen when you change graphical settings.
- Increased weapon accuracy in general.
- Increased footstep SFX of camels/horses on regular dry terrain.
- Better color for oasis water.
- Outlaw starter kit now starts with an m1917 rifle instead of the revolver.
- You can now shoot the lamps in villages and bedouin camps and they will turn off (if they are on) and drop to the ground.
- Made the command prompt for the coffee guy say "Drink Coffee" instead of just "Drink".
Patch 1.3.5 is now live with Weapon Straps!
So patch 1.3.5 is now live and it addresses several issues, bug fixes and includes new cool features!
* General:
<*>Bug Fix: Getting stuck on inventory screen, it showed up but didn't go away with Esc or Tab. Now this is fixed.
<*>Pressing Alt-Tab pauses the game properly now.
<*>Fixed adaptive music track while riding animals or vehicles
* Weapons:
<*>Added dynamic ropes to all primary weapons. Watch it in action here: https://youtu.be/LMcLwO_HMIQ
<*>Added an option to turn rope physics on and off (Off by default on Low quality preset)
<*>Adjusted crafting components needed for weapons.
<*>Weapon moving back and forth.
* Menus:
<*>Crafting menu design adjustments.
<*>Hovering stat bar in inventory to be smaller.
<*>Removed hovering from icons in crafting menu because the name is shown.
<*>"Salvage All" button in loot window is shown properly now
<*>We now show a prompt to indicate that camels have an inventory
<*>When in graphics options and using D-Pad up/down or keyboard up/down, the maximum limit you could reach at bottom of the list showed the last item cut off. Now it's fixed.
* World:
<*>Oasis Water color was too transparent, now it's more opaque.
<*>Cats and cows will have brown/ginger colors that are more realistic for this location.
<*>Added Shadowed Parallax Occlusion depth to terrain textures for richer and more realistic look.
* Animals:
<*>Various tweaks for behavior and bug fixes
As always, let us know what you think. Report any issues you find in the bug report forum.
If you like the game, please help us spread the word about it and give us a positive review on the Steam store page. It really helps :)
Best Regards,
Ahmad Jadallah
Director of Development
Semaphore
Twitter:
@SemaphoreLab
@AhmadJadallah
Patch 1.3 is now live! Check out the Release Notes here
Patch 1.3 is now live and it features a host of additions, improvements and bug fixes. We listen very carefully to your feedback and many thanks for everyone who reported on their issues.
Here are the release notes:
* General:
- Game executable was not working in some cases. This had to do with saving data location. Now it's fixed.
- Add version number to the top right corner of in-game all the time
- Performance Optimization in villages.
- Fixed Camera occlusion issues (Collision with the environment).
- Overall balancing of item values and crafting components
- Oasis used to play water footstep sounds before you reach the actual water surface.
- Fixed issues with dying while sleeping
- Oil field is now animated, has industrial props and utility loot surrounding it, and plays proper machinery sounds.
- Reduced the foot SFX of the horse/camel walking/running on rain/snow to half the current value
- Sand accumulation was happening during snow. Now fixed.
- Temperatures now are accurate throughout the year. Temperature will increase during day and decrease at night.
- Replace "Y" for interaction 2 with "Q". Closer to the left hand.
- Allow horse and camel to go over tiles in the air strip.
- Made "Cloud Shadows" an optional feature that should be turned off on "Low" preset only
* Menus:
- You can now see the value of each slider in the menus (FOV slider, audio sliders, etc...)
- On loot boxes/merchants/vehicles added an icon to indicate "All"
- Player inventory starts with 50 KG capacity, capacity can be increased when you equip a solider backpack (20 kg additional) or an explorer bag (10 kg additional)
- In crafting menu, when an item is needed and you don't have enough of it, we write the amount that you have so 3/5 in red colors means you don't have enough yet but you have 3. So you know right away how many more you need.
- In crafting menu, we write the name of the crafting component that is needed so you don't have to guess what the item icon means.
- When you are using a mouse and hovering over an item you see a box containing the "Stats and Condition" of that item.
- Hover over Salvage and Crafting components (in crafting menu and inventory item window at bottom) and you get a tool tip showing their name
- Fixed a bug where the scroller in crafting window snaps to bottom all the time
* Player:
- Adjusted overall stamina depletion rate to be more realistic.
- Added looking around animations that happen while walking. This helps break the walk cycle look and make it more natural.
- When unlock a box then close the window, make the player stand up automatically
- Fixed fingernails appearing black sometimes
* Weapons:
- Cross hair will now become red to indicate if you are aiming on your target.
- All weapons now have dispersion. Your accuracy while moving is going to be lower than if you are standing still. The cross hair will move to indicate that.
- Fixed an issue where after shooting the Luger or revolver, the gun doesn't immediately return to its position.
Thompson and MP18 automatic firing is working properly now.
* Interactivity:
- Hitting metal fences and columns in the airport (while driving a car or a tank) will make them fall if you moving at a high speed.
- Added several gas tanks, explosive barrels, and water barrels in the airport. Those are all interactive and will have different behavior when shot. Check them out :)
- Punching wooden or clay props or using a tool to hit them with will cause them to break
* Coming Up Next:
- Key Rebinding .
- Quick Access Bar (Hot Bar) at the bottom which you can drag items to and access with a single key press on keyboard.
- Photo Mode: Frame your shot, change the filters and effects and take that awesome screenshot.
- Localized Subtitles for all speech.
- Saving the location of all vehicles and rideable animals in the place you were in.
- Wild Animals that can attack the player. Starting with a wolf.
- Different ammo calibers for each of the weapons in the game. So no more unified ammo for all weapons.
This is just a sample of the features coming up next.
Patch 1.2 is Available now!
Badiya Alpha 1.2 is available now and it brings a host of fixes and improvements in gameplay and performance to ensure a smoother gameplay experience:
- Options menu issue fixed (Previous patch fixed it for some users but this fix should work for everyone now.
- Performance: Made "Volumetric Lighting" an optional feature and tied it to high and ultra presets only.
- Performance: Made "Heat Haze" an optional feature and tied it to high and ultra presets only.
- Balancing pass on all items in terms of value, weight, and degrade rate.
- Rock axe will be more durable now so it can be used more before it's condition reaches 0.
- Fixed watch tower collision in airstrip.
- Revolver icon matches the model now.
- Increased amount of rocks and woods scattered in desert.
- Escape now exits the inventory if it is shown.
- Temperature Display in Winter is now corrected.
- Prevent Dying while sleeping.
- Camera sensitivity can now be changed in the controls menu with the gamepad, previously only with mouse.
- Merchants money is not shown as an item in trade now.
- Brightness of dust from horse/camel is adjusted at night.
- Loot boxes in ruins will not be locked.
- Flipped inspect window sides, so that long item names appear correctly uncut.
- Weight of all items and all inventories will be shown with one decimal point only.
- Implemented failed action SFX when failed to buy/sell,..
- Tied Horse sounds and footsteps, camel sounds and footsteps, Coffee pourer cup sfx, weapon shots, reload and dry, lock picking sounds and all vehicle engine sounds, collision to the SFX multiplier in options menu.
- Herbs wont have extreme bending from wind anymore.
- Disabled volumetric fog near sunset to avoid artifacts.
- Showed an indicator at the top right of each item in the merchants inventory. icon should be green if you have money to buy it and red otherwise.
- You can no longer walk up to any NPC that is not a merchant and take all their clothes by pressing TAB.
- Vehicle Issues Fixed (cannot take tires with a wrench, cannot show inventory while inside a vehicle).
- Ensured that the wrench is working with the tires and the pouch is working with fuel.
- Increase icon appearance distance over pickable items on the ground.
- Fixed inability to holster the hunting knife.
- Prevent shooting domestic animals (Will be enabled in Alpha 2 along with the new reaction system).
- If the player has extra weight in inventory and he tries to run, we now show a message on top "You are encumbered and can't run".
- If the player tries to shoot civilians or domestic animals, we now show a message saying "You can't shoot civilians and domestic animals in Alpha 1". (Will be enabled in Alpha 2 along with the new reaction system).
- Fixed Cat running animation being faster than it's actual movement speed.
- Tweaks for all domestic animals and civilians.
- Fixed "Invisible Walls" in the ancient ruins.
The following will be done in Alpha 1.2.1 which would be early next week:
- Fix rotation on "Bedouin Rifle, Luger, and Revolver" so that they point forward correctly to cross hair and don't penetrate hands.
- Trees should provide the player with some fruits (Apple, Apricot, Orange, Lemon, Olive), one type per tree, less fruits than wood.
- Add extra props to the airstrip such as: Explosive Barrels, Gas Canisters that can be shot and can release pressure that pushes it around, Leaking Barrels, Deformable Barrels.
Patch 1.1 is live now
Thank you all for a great first day for Badiya Alpha 1. We made it to the Steam Homepage's "Featured and Recommended" main header, made it to the popular new titles list and the Top Selling list!
Our journey is just starting, we listened to your feedback and watched many of the walkthrough videos that were made and we have a fresh patch available now.
- Saving issue in options menu is now fixed.
- Bullets should be shown as (Number of bullets in clip/Total Number of Bullets) currently they are reversed
Update Localization
- Lock pick bar to be orange and moving bar to be blue
- The cowboy hat is tilted downward, rotated it up a bit
- Lock Picked boxes can be empty sometimes
- weather switch to happen over 30 seconds for a gradual change
- Sandstorms looking good now
- Icons on items to show on top of models even when on horse/camel/vehicle
- Icons on items to show on pickable herbs
- Fix flying tires issue in airport. Tires themselves are pickable as well
- Spawn Fuel Tanks, Wrenches, Weapons in Airports. Those will be scattered and random so you will have to search the airpstrips well.
- Spawn Fuel Tanks and Tires in Villages
- Fix localization errors
- Tweaked prey animals health
Those tweaks will greatly enhance the experience and they address the most common concerns.
Of course our ongoing goal is optimization and that's something we are actively working on. One thing we are heavily researching is switching our terrain generation from the current CPU implementation to a GPU implementation. That should take care of the majority of the majority of lag issues. The remaining will be AI Crowd optimization in villages and tents.
Take care and keep on exploring Badiya!
Ahmad Jadallah
Director of Development
Semaphore Labs
Badiya Alpha 1 Developer Walkthrough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ums0aEo72ao
Please help us spread this video :)
Coming to Steam Early Access on this page:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/545050
For more details check out our website:
http://www.semaphorelab.com
Follow us on Twitter @SemaphoreLab
Badiya Alpha 1 is Coming November 11th to Early Access
We announced Badiya in April of this year with a reveal trailer that demonstrated our overall vision for the game. An infinite procedural open world set in the desert post World War 1 where your primary goal is to survive both the environment and the elements.
Badiya got a great reception from the community worldwide and the game was shown at the PC Gaming Show at E3 2016. Since then, the game appeared in several "top most anticipated games of 2016" videos on Youtube (6 so far with a total of 7 million views and counting).
Now Alpha 1 will be the first time the game gets in the hands of a large group of gamers to experience the core mechanics we laid out: Exploration, Looting, Crafting, Cooking, Trading, Hunting, Riding of Animals and driving vehicles and Inventory management. You can take a look at the full current and planned feature list on this link Here .
We coupled Badiya's gameplay features with a unique technical backbone supporting high end features you typically find in AAA games. Our rendering pipeline is based on Physically Based Rendering which takes into account the real life material properties of the all the different surfaces involved in any given object. A full day/night cycle is present along with a variety of weather conditions including Rain, Snow, Sand Storms and many others.
A full cinematic post processing chain provides features such as GI simulation (color bleeding), post processing, grain, vignetting, chromatic abberation, depth of field along with several choices for Anti aliasing like FXAA, SMAA, and Temporal Antialiasing that eliminates shimmering on distant objects resulting in a cleaner and stable overall image.
Badiya provides procedural destruction on props and objects that take into account the properties of the weapon you are shooting with and the angle of shooting. In addition, we provide long leaves touch bending on short palms so that leaves actually bend when you go through them instead of going inside the character.
Badiya Alpha 1 provides full support for 4K resolution with a user interface that scales nicely and looks sharp. Alpha 1 provides (in addition to keyboard and mouse) full support for Xbox One and PS4 controller which you can switch to at any point on the fly. Keybinding is next on our list!
We look forward to welcoming you on this journey and look forward to your feedback to shape it up to be the ultimate survival experience.