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.
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: 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.
Update 15 in beta branch
Update 15 is now available to everyone on the main branch.
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.
Edit: German and Chinese translations are now available for this version as well
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.
Dev Diary: Health and Healing
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.
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.
New Judgment Discord Server
Hello survivors,
Judgement day has come and gone, and while the future remains uncertain, in this holiday season we can still rejoice with what we have, and our shared humanity.
My name is Harel, and I am the newest member of the Suncrash team. It’s an honor, and a bit humbling, to see how much effort has already gone into the game these past years, and how well all of you received it!
I will join the team as a Game Designer, but one of my very first tasks is to open a Discord server for our community and serve as a Community Manager. We built something very special here, and we love your dedication and enthusiasm for Judgement. Now we want to be able to talk more directly with all of you, especially as we get closer to release. We want to hear your suggestions for improvements, help you out with any pesky bugs that may not have been squashed (yet) and see pictures of your settlements (or cats, or settlements with cats. This is the internet after all).
I am happy to say our Discord server is now up, and you can find us at:
https://discord.gg/yH6v4uR We hope to see you there.
Still a long road ahead...
All the while, work is continuing apace on the next update, and I can offer you a sneak peek of a new feature - Armor Models. Your survivors' appearance will change according to the armor they are wearing. It may seem like a small thing, but it required quite a bit of work:
While all of us in the Suncrash team are going to keep working throughout the holidays to try and bring you the next update, and the final game out as soon as possible, we do want to thank you for your continued support. 2017 was an amazing year for Suncrash - we released several major updates, including new trader mechanics, neighboring settlements and a reworked world exploration mechanic, in addition to dozens of other changes based on your feedback and support for German & Chinese.
Update 14 - The Neighbors
Survivors,
It's been a month since we announced that we are postponing the full release because we felt it wasn't ready yet. This past month we paused working on full-release content, and instead focused on a new update - which is now available in the beta branch.
Update 14 - "The Neighbors" ended up being more impressive than we expected, given the fact that most of the time we worked on full release content (that was removed from this update), and we only worked on the actual update a single month. Here are the highlights of this update.
Note: Due to some major infrastructure changes, saved games from previous versions will not work with this update. If you really hate to abandon your game, you can still play Update 13 from the Steam betas. See below for instructions.
When you explore the world map, you will now find other settlements similar to your own. You can establish relationships with them, and interact with them in several ways, such as trading, recruiting their members or raiding them.
Occasionally, they will initiate contact with you themselves, depending on your relationship with them, they may request assistance, provide gifts, or even attack your base.
Equipment Effects
As part of our attempt to make the tactical combat more varied and interesting, we added more effects to equipment. Many armor and weapons now provide passive bonuses, or active combat abilities. In addition, some weapons have on-hit effects that weaken the enemies they attack.
Skills Rebalancing
Survivor skills have been rebalanced, and many new skills have been added. Some skills now give combat abilities, and some items require specific skills in order to equip them.
On the other hand, crafting items such as medicine and holy water no longer requires specific skills. The same is true for mining minerals. Managing base economy is now a bit easier and more transparent.
Other changes include adding a 6th level to all professions, a new profession "Defender", which is a defensive version of the fighter, and most skills gained on level up now have 3 tiers, gaining each tier makes the next time you choose this skill more powerful.
We also added a small random element, so for every level there are 3 options out of 4 possible options. So different survivors have skill trees that are a bit different from each other, making them more unique.
Content
New weapons, armor, some research, and a bunch of human enemies were added among some other content, in addition to all the new skills and settlements related content.
Matching Combat Maps
We added a bunch of new combat map types, and it is now finally possible for us to match the combat map to the world map location. Depending on where you initiate a scavenge, rescue or attack mission, different combat maps will be possible. No more scavenging a hospital and fighting in a military base.
Performance Improvements
We put a big emphasis on solving bugs and lags. As far as we can tell there shouldn't be any major lag issues, even when you build maze-like bases and large base attacks.
We also put a lot of work into new infrastructure that will make it easier for us to add new content in the future.
Some major infrastructure changes prevented us from supporting old saved games, so you will have to start a new game to play Update 14. You can still play Update 13 if you really want to continue your previous game, however we recommend that start anew and play the improved Update 14.
To play a previous version, right click the game in the Steam client, select properties, and click the “Betas” tab. In the betas tab click the drop down and select the Update 13 branch.
Many older mods should work, but configuration format changes may prevent some of the mods from working in Update 14. Specially those that change skills, professions and abilities. See here for a list of backwards-compatibility breaking changes.
Full list of changes
<*>Mechanics: Weapons can now have on-hit effects that will apply whenever a weapon hits an enemy.
<*>Mechanics: Equipment and temporary combat effects may now affect survivor or enemy movement speed.
<*>Mechanics: After combat survivors can not have higher health than they had when the combat started. Can no longer use combat healing to permanently heal injured survivors. This is required due to new non-consumable healing options that were introduced.
<*>Mechanics: Added armor piercing effect to some weapons, that ignores a percent of an enemy's armor.
<*>Mechanics: Added other survivor settlements in the world map that you can interract with. Depending on your relationship you can raid, trade or recruit survivors from other settlements. Hostile settlements may raid your base.
<*>Mechanics: Survivor skills may now grant combat abilities.
<*>Mechanics: Fight human enemies.
<*>Mechanics: Survivors can now reach level 6. Level-up skills are a bit more randomized and different between survivors. You now have 3 options out of 4 possible options per level per profession, and you can see them all in advance.
<*>Mechanics: Choosing the same level-up skill several times will provide increasingly higher benefits.
<*>Mechanics: Combat map is now determined by the scavenge location.
<*>Usability: Now showing a notification icon when a survivor is manually assigned to a specific task.
<*>Usability: Now showing a notification icon when a survivor is manually assigned to a specific task.
<*>Usability: By default there is no longer gathering limits on water.
<*>Usability: Right clicking a world map location will only show the interaction option and not a move option.
<*>Usability: Survivor limit is now enforced more gracefully. When reaching the limit, no more rescue missions will appear, instead of creating impossibly difficult rescue missions.
<*>Usability: Removed DPS vs armor statistic, since it was innacurate due to differences in armor value between enemies.
<*>Usability: Selecting items now remembers the last scroll position per item type (weapon/armor/accessory).
<*>Usability: By default food crafting now has higher priority than other crafting.
<*>Usability: Display when survivor is manually assigned to a task. Manual assignments to ongoing task (research, mining) will now last for 24 game hours by default. This can be disabled in the options (so manual assignments will last until task is cancelled).
<*>Usability: Showing max health in survivor skills window.
<*>Usability: Added tutorial that explains auto crafting and gathering limits.
<*>Balancing: Tweaked world map generation to be a bit more accurate.
<*>Balancing: Increased task force travel speed.
<*>Balancing: Changes to research tree, equipment stats, costs, etc. Due to adding level 4-5 stuff.
<*>Balancing: Combat healing is now percent based instead of constant amount.
<*>Balancing: Removed skill requirements for crafting items.
<*>Balancing: Eqipping the strongest equipment in each tier now requires specific skills.
<*>Balancing: Tweaked weapon and armor stats due to active and passive abilities added to them.
<*>Balancing: Slowed attack rate of all weapons. The attack speed value now represents amount of attacks per 7.5 seconds instead of per 5 seconds. This makes combat a bit more managable and reduces effectiveness of ranged weapons compared to melee (harder to completely kill melee targets before they reach ranged shooters).
<*>Balancing: Balanced skill bonuses and penalties.
<*>Content: Several new Armor & Weapons.
<*>Content: Added combat abilities, passive effects and on-hit effects to many weapons and armor.
<*>Content: Added many new combat abilities.
<*>Content: Random events related to other survivor settlements.
<*>Content: Added mining town combat maps.
<*>Content: Added survivor settlement combat maps.
<*>Content: Added haunted glade combat maps.
<*>Content: Added ruins combat maps.
<*>Content: Added campsite combat maps.
<*>Content: Added farm combat maps.
<*>Cotnent: New profession: Defender. Similar to fighter but more emphasis on defensive skills.
<*>Content: Added many new starting and level-up skills.
<*>Visuals: Several new weapon firing visuals.
<*>Visuals: Reduced line spacing in some of the longer texts.
<*>Audio: Several new weapon firing sound effects.
<*>Audio: New day music track.
<*>AI: Enemies will now immediately select a new target when their previous target left their range, instead of chasing the original target. They may still chase it if there are no other targets in range.
<*>AI: Enemies will now prefer the closest target when reselecting target and there are several targets within range. They only reselect a target when their current target leaves range or is incapacitated.
<*>Performance: Dramatically improved performance when there are lots of survivors and lots of tasks.
<*>Performance: Dramatically improved performance with maze-like base entrances.
<*>Performance: Improved performance when enemies target a survivor and the target moves around a lot.
<*>Performance: Improved title screen loading time.
<*>Fixed Issue: Task forces could disappear when more than one reached their destination at the same time.
<*>Fixed Issue: Survivor could be stuck after performing a rescue operation.
<*>Fixed Issue: Rescued survivors would not spawn if their spawning spot in the base map was occupied. They now spawn randomly in the map edges.
<*>Fixed Issue: Items with long descriptions now have a scroll bar in the item info window (when right clicking an item).
<*>Fixed Issue: Sometimes when trying to select weapon/armor the window would appear empty.
<*>Fixed Issue: Couldn't assign manual crafting task if you had none of that item already in your inventory.
<*>Fixed Issue: Special base attacks (night howls, settlement raids) no longer reset awareness or are affected by it in terms of difficulty.
<*>Fixed Issue: no longer taking into account work speed difficulty setting when showing survivor work speed in priorities, to reduce clutter.
<*>Fixed Issue: several texts will now shrink when they are larger than the space allocated to them. Specially useful in translated versions.
<*>Fixed Issue: survivors were supposed to (but didn't) eat/sleep even when above the threshold before going to perform far away tasks that they would have barely had time to work on, or even had to go back before reaching it. This now works correctly.
Early Access Update
Survivors,
Sometimes we destroy the demons, but sometimes we need to retreat, and regroup. This is one of those times.
We pushed so hard to get everything ready for an October release, but your comments and support following our last update post got us thinking. We realized that if we insist to release in October, we will end up compromising on the quality of that release.
So, after much consideration we reached the hard decision to postpone Judgment's full release until Q2 2018.
So what does all this mean?
First, it means that the full release will not be a rushed release, making it more stable and polished.
Second, we will have more time to add more new content for the full release, making it even bigger than originally planned.
Last, we will not leave you waiting all these months without anything to do. We will release another build before the full release. This will be a smaller update, mostly addressing known issues from Update 13, but we will include at least one large new feature and some content.
I sincerely apologize to those of you who were eagerly awaiting the full version, but I do promise that we have your best interests in heart, and we do this only because we want you to have the full version you deserve, one that you will enjoy for many hours. More months of development also increase our costs and are a strain on our budget, but we believe this is the right decision and hope that it will pay off in the long run financially as well as in quality.
Thank you for your understanding.
Full Release Progress
Survivors,
Our long fight is nearing it's end. These last battles are the hardest ones yet, but we are strong and we will rid the planet of these deamons!
Much of the end-game functionality for the full version has already been implemented. We added over 30 new pieces of equipment, including some awesome new occult weapons, hi-tech equipment, and even items that combine both! A bit of new scavenge-only equipment like a chainsaw and a minigun have been added as well.
New world map biomes, demons, resources that can be collected in the base, and matching technologies have all been introduced. I estimate around 50% increase in content, most of it end-game.
We are now hard at work to integrate the campaign story and cutscenes. Much of it has been added already, but some of the storyline requires additional functionality, such as fighting other survivors, which still needs to be implemented.
After that we will have a lot of testing, balancing, and polishing, both on the new additions and from previous feedback and issues that we still need to polish, including some performance issues.
We will also have to do some additional translations, including translating the new content to the supported languages (German and Chinese), and also supporting additional languages. We haven't made a final decision for which languages will be supported during the full version launch, but at least French and Spanish will be added if all goes well.
While we're not yet ready to announce a full release date, but our deadline is a bit tight. If we don't release soon, we will enter the holiday season, which is not the best time to release indie games. So we are giving all we have in order to finish everything in time before that, knowing that otherwise it means postponing to early 2018, and we really want to avoid that.
This is a very stressful yet exciting time for us, we hope everyone will be happy with what we are doing. In the meantime, here are a few screenshots demonstrating some of the new content.
Last chance for Early Access prices
Edit: the price change has been approved by Valve, and the current price is already the full version price.
Survivors,
This is a heads up, for the prices in the apocalypse are about to increase. Those pesky demons going about destroying everything causing shortages and stuff... Last chance to get Judgment for the Early Access price!
We have been considering for a while whether we want to keep the early access price for the full release, and after a lot of consideration and deliberation we decided to increase the price for the full release. Around Tuesday, September 26th, we plan to increase the price to 19.99$ (base US price). The exact date may change due to the time it takes Valve to approve a price change.
This decision comes to serve a few purposes. First, we believe that with all the updates since we launched Early Access, the game is definitely better, and worth more than it was back then. Compared to other games in the market of similar quality, it's a bit underpriced.
The second consideration is long term. In order to continue to update Judgment after release and create new games, the studio needs enough income to cover its costs. So far sales of Judgment have not been enough to cover its expenses. We hope that by raising the price on full release the game will earn enough to cover its cost and allow us more breathing space towards future updates and our next game.
Last but not least, we see this as a way to thank our Early Access supporters. This way, our earliest supporters, those who believed in us when the game was still in its earlier stages, end up paying less for the game than those who join after the full release.
Full Version Progress
Progress on the full version is going well. We've already the new items, equipment and enemies to the game. Still a bit of fine tuning left, and then we can move on to implementing the story. We'll be announcing a release date soon. This is a very exciting time for us!
Update 13 - The Traders
The Traders Update
Survivors, the end is nearing. Will you survive that long? Update 13, with all it’s new goodies is now available, while we’re hard at work on the full version, with tons of new content and a full campaign.
Our main focus in this update was around polish. A very large portion of the changes introduced were inspired by player feedback and suggestions. We tried to improve the most annoying parts of the game, improve usability, and make the whole thing smoother. There are also a few new mechanics, a bit of new content, graphical improvements and many bug fixes.
A big thanks to all the players that played update 13 in the beta branch. Thanks to your efforts we were able to identify and fix many issues for a more stable main branch release.
Edit: A patch for Update 13 has been uploaded. See list of fixes here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/455980/discussions/0/1470841715965115923/
A full list of changes can be found in the bottom of this post.
Trading
In update 13, traders have been introduced to the game. Scraps are no longer necessary to craft or build all items, instead they are used as currency. Every once in a while, survivors that are not part of your colony will drop by and offer to trade. If you’re missing those items you couldn’t find, or don’t have the skill to create, these traders will be happy to provide them, for a hefty profit. Sometimes traders will have rare equipment that you can’t make yourself, or beyond your technology.
Traders stock is randomized every time a trader arrives, and the level of items depends on the stage in the game. Later in the game, when stronger demons attack, you will also be able to find stronger equipment in the hands of these traders.
Build a strong economy, craft stuff that you don’t need so you can sell them for profit, and use those “funds” (scraps) to buy what you do need. Traders add a whole new aspect to colony management, where producing more than you need can prove beneficial.
This update also comes with the added benefit of removing the artificial scraps bottleneck that had you running around searching for scraps all game long, no matter what you wanted to craft. Scraps are still very valuable, but no longer a bottleneck.
Automatic Combat
Sometimes when you grow strong, but you need some clay, or stone from a scavenge location near your base, with a few pesky imps guarding them, it feels redundant and boring to fight them.
Here comes auto-combat. For scavenge missions, you may now choose to run a combat simulation instead of actually controlling it. In most cases this simulation will be less effective than manual control. It will not make use of cover, flanking, and activated abilities. It is very useful, however, to skip easy battles quickly.
Scrapping Equipment
One recurring complaint from players in previous versions was that they often found themselves stuck with outdated equipment that they have no further use for. In this update, there is now more than one use for such outdated equipment. You may sell it to traders for some scraps, or you can choose to scrap the equipment to get back half of the resources used to craft it.
Equipment that cannot be crafted may also be destroyed for some scraps, but less than you would get by selling it.
Visual Improvements
Several improvements were made to combat animations, making it feel smoother and more fluid. Walk animations, attack animations, and the animation between attacks have all been improved.
In addition, new survivor portraits have been drawn and replaced the old ones. There are now 10 faces per gender with 6 different hairstyles. We also changed a bit the default portraits, these are the portraits that are generated automatically. These are now a bit more restricted for appearances that make more sense.
Manual customization of appearances is still possible, just like before, and much less restricted than the default characters. Go crazy with any hair and body color combination, just like before.
Gather limits
A major part of this update is about usability improvements. You can now define minimum/maximum gather limits to better control your economy.
When assigning tasks, survivors will now ignore gathering tasks if you already have enough in stock. A problem often encountered by setting such limits was survivors running back and forth. A survivor would gather water until the goal is reached, then move on to another task, but before even reaching that other task, someone drank some water. Now the water stocks were below the goal again, and the survivor would go back to gathering. This was very inefficient, spending more time walking around than actually working.
Our solution allows you to define minimum and maximum settings, creating a “neutral zone” in between. So survivors start gathering when stocks are under the minimum, all through the neutral zone and until reaching the maximum, then stop. Now as people drink, the stocks would go down from the maximum all through the neutral zone until they reach the minimum, only then will gathering start again. During this buffer survivors can perform other tasks for longer periods of time, spending less time going back and forth.
The same logic is used for automatic crafting.
Note: Unlike automatic crafting, gathering limits do not designate gathering tasks automatically. You still need to define which trees to chop, stones to quarry, and so on, but feel free to designate large areas knowing survivors will pause from performing these tasks once the limits are reached.
Other Usability Improvements
Other usability improvements include being able to directly assign survivors to eat/sleep or craft a specific item by right clicking the bed/table/crafting station. You can now re-roll a single survivor when choosing your starting survivors. A new options window allows tweaking some controls such as mouse lock, edge scrolling, auto combat and so on. A keyboard shortcut (default C) was added during combat to cancel current commands.
See the full list of changes below for additional improvements.
Reworked Rituals
Rituals were a bit underpowered, and hence under-used. We re-balanced existing rituals, to make them more worthwhile economically. For example, removing a survivor from farming duty, and instead performing a ritual that improves farming speed, may be more productive than if you let them farm instead.
We also added a place for rituals, the “Arcane Foundry”, and several new rituals. Many of these new rituals are not directly related to the economy, providing boosts that cannot be achieved by simple optimization, like improved combat stats and faster map movement.
Military Base Combat Maps
A new combat biome has been added - the military base. Surrounded by fences, blockades and ruined military vehicles, this intimidating maps add new variety to combat.
Our end goal is to have enough combat maps and combat biomes so that we can choose a fitting map depending on where the combat takes place, instead of randomly selecting from all available maps.
Previous saves and mods
Saved games from update 12 should work just fine. Update 12 mods are very likely to work fine as well, though you may want to tweak item values for trading. See the few backwards compatibility breaking changes.
Update 13 in beta branch
Edit (August 4th)
Since the announcement we have fixed a few issues thanks to your reports, and also added the full German and Chinese support for the new texts.
Here we are with Update 13! Try it out in the beta branch and let us know what you think. Feedback received in the beta branch for the last 2 updates helped us tremendously, and we're counting on you!
These past couple of months were again divided between working on the upcoming update, and creating content for the full version. This will very likely be the last major update before the full version, which in itself will be a HUGE update (remember, we started working on stuff for the full version months ago).
So, what did we do in this update? Most of our efforts are around making the game more usable, removing what's annoying and making it easier to play. A few new mechanics were introduced as well, and a bit of content. Below are the highlights. The full list, as usual, will be published when we make the release available in 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.
Other survivors now roam the apocalypse, and they may stumble upon your colony, providing an opportunity to trade your resources for other stuff that you need.
As part of this feature we removed the scraps cost from almost all crafting and building projects, using scraps as currency instead. Other than removing the annoying scraps bottleneck, you can now purchase stuff that you haven't been able to find, even research materials if you're lucky.
Scrapping
A much requested feature, you can now scrap your unused equipment and get half their costs back.
Rituals
We've done a major rework to rituals balancing and added many new rituals. They are now essential for your survival, specially in the harder difficulty levels (oh yeah, there's now another, harder, difficulty level for those who love a challenge).
Graphics and animations
Many of the combat animations have been replaced with much better looking ones. In addition, we finally replaced those placeholder survivor portraits with new ones. They are still customizable.
Usability Changes
These are too many to list here, but we've been listening to your feedback and implemented many of things that would make your life less painful. You can now automate gathering tasks by setting limits similar to the auto craft feature, a new auto-combat feature will help skip those boring sure-win scavenge runs, fixed problems with being hit when well out of range if the attack cooldown started when still in range, reorder survivors, directly assign crafting tasks, re-roll a single survivor when starting a new game, press C in combat to cancel commands for selected survivors, and more.
Mods and old saved games
Saved games from update 12 should work just fine. Update 12 mods are very likely to work fine as well, though you may want to tweak item values for trading. See the few backwards compatibility breaking changes.
