The apocalypse may be here, but we are surviving, and fighting back.
And now, we finished crafting Alpha 10, codename - "The Professionals", to help us in our fight!
Alpha 10 is now available on the main branch. These past two months were very busy for us. We grew our team, hired a PR firm, created a new trailer, and through this all, we were working on this latest update - Alpha 10. A lot of work for two guys.
Here's some of what's new in alpha 10 and what we've been up to in the past two months. The full list of changes can be found below.
A new survivor generation window will appear before the game starts. You will get a chance to see your survivors, customize them, or re-roll new survivors if you're not happy with what you got.
New Judgment Trailer
Making a trailer that is interesting, captivating, and represents your game well is not an easy task. It took us a while to get everything the way we wanted, but in the end we are very happy with the results. What do you think of our new trailer?
Profession System
Our goal was making survivors more unique, having more effect on your play style. The 7 skill system felt inadequate for the task. All of the survivors had the same skills, and could improve any of them. Traits helped differentiate them a bit, but not enough.
So we scrapped it. Now, every survivor starts with a profession and some skills from that profession. As they perform tasks, they gain experience and earn levels. For every level you can select one of several new skills, depending on the profession.
You can still shape the direction in which your survivor evolves, but they are now more different from each other, adding more variety to the game.
It was a big challenge, designing and implementing this system. Not only did it's code integrate with almost every system in the game, it's effects on the game balance are grand. It took many iterations until we got the balance right, and I'm sure there is still much more we can improve.
Right now there are 4 professions, each has 5 levels, and every level has 2-3 skills, for a total of more than 50 new skills you can choose from. In addition there are tens of possible starting skills. We will be adding more in following updates, more skills, professions and mechanics.
All professions are fully moddable.
New Skills System
In the new system, a survivor either has or doesn't have a skill. Every skill provides bonuses to different stats. Some bonuses require specific weapons to be equipped, so an Occultist, for example, may get great combat bonuses, but only using occult weaponry.
Some crafting and building tasks now require specific skills. For example, to build a guard tower a survivor must have the "Defensive Building" skill. Choose your survivor skills wisely and plan ahead.
These new skills are fully moddable.
Improved world map
The world map is now 4 times bigger, more sparse, with a more interesting layout. The world now has rural areas and cities. Cities are very dense with scavenge opportunities, while rural areas are more likely to have farms and military bases. Explore the map until you find the areas that have what you need.
Scavenge difficulty is no longer as linear as it was. Things still get harder the farther you are from your base, but it's a bit more random, and some locations (like military bases) hold tougher enemies than others (like farms).
We also make sure that resources essential for research are always available in a reasonable distance from the base with enemies of reasonable difficulty.
The world generation algorithm is moddable.
Research materials
Important research subjects now require scavenge-only resources that are used specifically for this purpose. Once you get your hands on these resources you will have to choose how to best spend them, depending on your situation. There should be enough of these to unlock the entire research tree eventually.
New Content
Most of the new content in alpha 10 revolves around the new profession & skill systems. Other than that, there's also a brand new Industrial Area scavenge biome, three new scavenge locations, a new enemy, and a new research subject.
Performance Improvements
Another very important update in alpha 10 is the improved performance and stability. With large colonies, the game could become laggy, and even freeze for a few seconds on some occasions, which would usually result in the operating system closing the game as non-responsive.
All of the performance issues that were reported were resolved, and a few others that we found. There shouldn't be any more performance issues, we've tested with over 50 survivors. If you encounter any, please let us know ASAP.
Additionally, we've improved performance of switching from base to world map, and the UI for sending survivors on missions.
Balancing
There were many balancing changes. Here are a few of the main ones:
Survivors now eat less often, so they don't have to stop their tasks and go find food so much as before.
Lots of stat tweaking around accuracy and evasion.
Custom difficulties now allow to disable base attacks completely, for those who want to focus on building and play in their own pace.
When a survivor dies you now get their equipment back.
Steam Workshop Support
Support for steam workshop has been added in alpha 10. The workshop itself (on steam) will be in beta for now, but anyone may join the beta program by simply joining this Steam Group. Once joined, you will have access to the workshop page, and be able to upload or download mods. Follow our modding guide to learn how to create and upload mods.
Additionally, you can now mod many new aspects of the game: Items, crafting, research, scavenge, enemies, skills, professions, world map generation, and much more. For more information check out the modding guide.
Previous saves and mods
Due to the change in the skills system, we couldn't support older saved games. You will have to start a new game in alpha 10.
Mods from previous alpha versions may or may not work, we have made some changes to the format of our configuration files. The modding wiki has been updated with all the new formats.
Full list of changes
<*>Mechanics: Changed skill system, skills no longer have levels, a survivor either has a skill or not. Skills now provide a much higher variety of bonuses/penalties.
<*>Mechanics: New profession system where each survivor has a profession and can earn profession levels. You can then choose new profession skills when they earn levels, customizing your survivors to fit your play style.
<*>Mechanics: Some crafting, building or actions now require the survivors to have certain skills to be performed.
<*>Mechanics: New bonuses that only take effect when specific items are equipped, such as bonus accuracy for bows.
<*>Mechanics: Starting survivors are now shown before starting a new game, and you can re-roll or customize their appearance before starting.
<*>Mechanics: Some scavenge loot is now hidden. Mostly scavengeable equipment.
<*>Mechanics: Can only scout empty tiles now. Scouting scavenge locations is now done automatically when the location is scavenged.
<*>Mechanics: In custom difficulty, can now turn off base attacks completely, and/or turn off awareness gain.
<*>Mechanics: A single research may now provide more than one passive bonus.
<*>AI: Survivors will now switch between tasks less often to prevent ping pong between tasks.
<*>AI: Enemies will now give higher priority to attacking survivors within their range, rather than chasing others who are outside their range.
<*>Usability: New survivor skills window where you can see a survivor's skills, and a summary of all their bonuses.
<*>Usability: Priorities window - can now sort according to specific task, instead of skill level.
<*>Usability: New level up notifications
<*>Usability: Tired survivors now have a visible negative status effect in combat.
<*>Usability: Clicking ESC in the world map now returns to base.
<*>Usability: Selected survivor info now takes less screen space. Most of the extra information is available when opening the skills window.
<*>Usability: Clicking some warnings will now take you to the correct place (rescue warning will take you to the world map, level up warning to the survivor skills window, etc).
<*>Usability: When manually assigning a task to a survivor, they will now continue to perform the task until it is complete, even after a food or rest break.
<*>Usability: Tasks where a survivor performs less than average now receive a lower starting priority.
<*>Content: Four new professions, and tens of new skills for the new skill & profession system.
<*>Content: New enemy creature: Lich. Tough, ranged, and high damage dealer. Stay away.
<*>Content: Some important research subjects now require special scavenge-only resources to perform. These are instead of other scavenge only raw materials (such as metals that were required before you could build metal mines)
<*>Content: Mutate ritual now switches a survivor's profession (randomly) and resets all skill choices (experience level is kept)
<*>Content: New world map generation algorithm. The map is now made of rural and urban areas, each with it's own density and location types.
<*>Content: World map is now 4 times bigger (64x64 instead of 32x32).
<*>Content: New "Farm" world map location, with high chances of finding food and raw materials.
<*>Content: New "School" world map location, with high chances of finding research materials.
<*>Content: New "Church" world map location, with high chances of finding religious and occult materials and artifacts.
<*>Content: New combat map biome - Industrial Area - with brand new assets such as factories, asphalt and storage tanks.
<*>Content: New research - "Demon Anatomy" that provides bonus to damage for all survivors.
<*>Modding: Steam workshop integration (Steam Workshop webpage is still in beta)
<*>Modding: Activate and deactivate mods from the game UI, instead of having to edit external text files.
<*>Modding: Can now mod enemies, skills, professions, food types, the world map generator, and other general game rules (such as starting items or amount of starting survivors).
<*>Visaul: New survivor animation when performing rituals.
<*>Visual: Improved some survivor animations (building, crafting, unarmed attack)
<*>Balancing: Some tasks now give more experience to some survivors, depending on their profession
<*>Balancing: Reduced how often survivors have to eat. Also reduced food creation rate to make up for it.
<*>Balancing: When a survivor dies you now get their equipment back.
<*>Balancing: Scavenge missions no longer add awareness, while rescue missions add more awareness than before.
<*>Balancing: Now making sure that some essential resources (research materials) are available in decent distances from the base, with decent difficulty levels.
<*>Balancing: Mining minerals now requires a survivor to have a matching skill.
<*>Balancing: Guard tower now requires a special survivor skill to build.
<*>Balancing: Crafting some advanced firearms now requires the survivor to have a matching skill.
<*>Balancing: Crafting some holy or dark occult items now requires the survivor to have matching skills.
<*>Balancing: Crafting medicine now requires the survivor to have a matching skill.
<*>Balancing: Clay can now be scavenged.
<*>Balancing: Tweaked how hit chance and evasion are calculated. Evasion is now subtracted from accuracy, instead of being multiplied. This means that evasion has more effect against low accuracy attackers.
<*>Balancing: Weapon and enemy accuracy were tweaked to account for the new hit chance calculations.
<*>Balancing: There is now a minimum hit chance of 20%.
<*>Balancing: Magic circles and altars can no longer be moved.
<*>Balancing: Starting visible range in world map has been increased.
<*>Balancing: When scouting a world map location (by scavenging), the revealed are is now larger.
<*>Balancing: World map scavenge difficulty is now more varied, and not 100% distance related (while farther away locations are still more likely to be higher difficulty with better loot).
<*>Balancing: World map scavenge difficulty is now affected by location type (military bases tend to have more difficult enemies and better loot than farms, assuming same distance from base).
<*>Balancing: You can now scavenge a larger variety of items, and the amounts better fit their value.
<*>Balancing: Salads are now crafted only at the food table.
<*>Balancing: Survivors now start with 1 skill that matches their profession, up to 2 generic skills, and up to 1 negative skills.
<*>Performance: Fixed issue where crafting many of the same item would create many crafting tasks. New crafting tasks will now be created only one per item, and new ones will be added when the previous ones are assigned to.
<*>Performance: Fixed major performance issues that happened with high populations and lots of tasks.
<*>Performance: Improved performance of switching between base view and world map.
<*>Performance: Improved performance of sending survivors on missions, which would also cause the game to hang sometimes.
<*>Performance: Improved performance of changing equipment from mission launch window.
<*>Fixed: Disabled survivor customization during combat which would cause animation issues if used.
<*>Fixed: After deleting a saved game from the title screen, it wouldn't refresh (so you had to delete it again or open/close the window before the deleted game was gone).
<*>Fixed: Pressing ESC with crafting priorities window open would not close the window and would mess up the game.
<*>Fixed: Crafting priorities window now has a scroll bar when needed (relevant when mods add many new items).
<*>Fixed: Destroying an object that had a task on it (such as a farm) would cause survivors not to perform any tasks.
<*>Fixed: Assigning a task manually would cause it to be performed in the bottom left tile, even if the survivor was closer to another tile.
<*>Fixed: When assigning a ritual task manually, the ritual effect would appear a bit off the center.
<*>Fixed: Error messages were blocking clicks in the area around them.
<*>Fixed: An icon for the "Dark Curse" event was missing which didn't allow you to use the cure unless you had the resources available at the beginning of the event.
<*>Fixed: Several status effects in combat would multiply on each other, instead of the base value (making them more powerful than planned when several were applied together)
Alpha 10 on beta branch
Making a game may be harder than surviving the apocalypse... But just like in Judgment, in the end we prevail.
Alpha 10 is finally available on the beta branch. Below is a partial list of the new stuff and changes. The full story and list of changes we will share when we make it available in the main branch, next week if all goes as planned.
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.
A new survivor generation window will appear before the game starts. You will get a chance to see your survivors, customize them, or re-roll new survivors if you're not happy with what you got.
Profession System
Tired of every survivor having the same 7 skills? Well, they don't anymore!
Every survivor now starts with a profession and some skills from that profession. As they perform tasks, they gain experience and earn levels in their profession. For every level you can select one of several new skills, depending on the profession.
This is the main change of this update, as it touches almost every aspect of the game, and took a lot of work to implement, test and balance. Right now there are 4 professions, each has 5 levels, and every level has 2-3 skills, for a total of more than 50 new skills you can choose from. In addition there are tens of possible starting skills.
These professions are fully moddable.
New Skills System
In the new system, a survivor either has or doesn't have a skill. Every skill provides bonuses to different stats. Some bonuses require specific weapons to be equipped, so an Occultist, for example, may get great combat bonuses, but only using occult weaponry.
Some crafting and building tasks now require specific skills. For example, to build a guard tower a survivor must have the "Defensive Building" skill. Choose your survivor skills wisely and plan ahead.
These new skills are fully moddable.
New world map
The world map is now 4 times bigger, more sparse, with a more interesting layout. The world now has rural areas, and cities. Cities are very dense with scavenge opportunities, while rural areas are more likely to have farms and military bases. Explore the map until you find the areas that have what you need.
Scavenge difficulty is no longer as linear as it was. Things still get harder the farther you are from your base, but it's a bit more random, and some locations (like military bases) hold tougher enemies than others (like farms).
We also make sure that resources essential for research are always available in a reasonable distance from the base with enemies of reasonable difficulty.
The world generation algorithm is moddable.
Research materials
Important research subjects now require scavenge-only resources that are used specifically for this purpose. Once you get your hands on these resources you will have to choose how to best spend them, depending on your situation. There should be enough of these to unlock the entire research tree eventually.
New Content
Other than the tens of new skills and professions, there's also a brand new Industrial Area scavenge biome, and a new enemy creature.
Performance Improvements
We solved all of the performance issues we could locate, and all of those that were reported to us. If you encounter any more performance problems, even with large colonies, please let us know ASAP.
Steam Workshop Support
We implemented support for steam workshop. The workshop will be in beta for now, but anyone may join the beta program. We will provide more information about this in the near future.
Previous saves and mods
Due to the change in the skills system, we couldn't support older saved games. You will have to start a new game in alpha 10.
Mods from previous alpha versions may or may not work, we have made some changes to the format of our configuration files. The modding wiki will be updated in the next couple of days to describe these changes and the new modding possibilities of alpha 10.
Judgment and Company updates
Survivors,
We have good news! In the last few weeks we were hard at work searching for help at Suncrash. In addition to all the programming and graphics work, we were interviewing Game Designers, PR firms and video production agencies.
This week, we found all three!
Welcome Kobi Romano, the latest addition to our 2 - turned - 3 person team. Kobi has an MA in genetics and a calling for making games. With his help, a person dedicated to designing the game's system and balance, I'm sure Judgment will become better than ever.
We also have a new PR agency that will take off some of our workload and help create great content for our community. You'll be hearing from them soon.
Be prepared for a brand new Judgment trailer soon. We're working with a very talented production agency and I'm really excited to see that new trailer come to life.
To top all that, Yoni and I (Tomer) will now be able to concentrate on making graphics and programming, so we expect better, bigger updates in the near future.
What about alpha 10?
Now that we're free to fully dedicate ourselves to finishing up alpha 10, I expect it to be ready in no time. We plan to release our next update during the first or second week of December.
In the meantime here's a small teaser of things to come.
Judgment team expanding
Hey everyone,
I wanted to let you in on some of what's going on at Suncrash.
Alpha 10 progress
One of the bigger changes in this update is a new skills system and level up system. In the new system you will have more control of how a survivor evolves and be able to customize it to fit your situation and playstyle.
As you can imagine, replacing such a core system in the game requires not only lots of development work, but a lot of time put into creating enough content and balancing the system.
We've finished programming this system and most of the other features planned for the update, but are still working on all the content and balancing for these updates.
Hiring a Game Designer
As some of you may know, we're a very small - 2 person - team. It falls on me to take care of programming, content design, balancing, marketing, QA, communicating with you guys, and many other business related tasks.
Unfortunately, doing all this doesn't allow me to spend as much time as the game needs, on game design - creating and balancing content such as items, research, combat, and so on.
So we've decided to expand, and are searching for a game designer to join the team. A dedicated person that will design, balance and test all the different systems, I believe, will provide a great boost to Judgment.
Unfortunately, finding the right person that has the required skills, able to work independently, and is a good fit for the team, is not an easy process. I'm spending much more time than I'd like to on searching, interviewing and testing potential candidates.
Here's a reddit post with more info on what we're looking for, if you happen to know someone interested that would be a good fit, don't hesitate to send them our way.
Alpha 9 released - First mod support
Alpha 9
Hello Survivors,
Alpha 9 is now available in the main branch! This month has been a bit shorter and tougher than usual. We had some personal vacations, some technical challenges, and some painstaking work that had to be done to enable localization. More on all that in the update below.
A lot of the additions in this update came directly from requests and recommendations of our Early Access players. We value the community's feedback and are always listening and asking for more. Please keep letting us know what you think, how we can improve, and coming up with cool ideas. We can't do this without you!
We’d like to thank you all for your support and your patience, and we hope this update will add to your game experience. Without further delay, here are the main changes in alpha 9. The full list of changes can be found as usual in the end of this post.
Players were complaining that these two were missing from day 1. There were some technical difficulties in implementing these features, since we didn't plan for them ahead of time (yes, beginner's mistake...). Well, we managed to overcome these difficulties, and it's now possible to rotate many of the objects you can build. This is mostly functional and not aesthetic, so most square objects can't be rotated, and others only have two directions (horizontal or vertical).
Let us know what you think of these limitations, since the objects are 2D we need to work on every additional direction separately and mostly prefer to add new stuff.
In addition, it's now possible to move some objects, mainly workstations that are built inside the cabins. Moving an object doesn't require any resources, but it does take time to build it again in the new position.
New Food System
While keeping survivors fed felt a bit of a challenge in the first or second playthrough, it quickly became trivial, and was just an annoying thing that needed to be done without much challenge or benefit.
Our goal is to change this, and make food a more important and interesting part of the game. This rehaul of the food system is a first step, we are still considering ways to make starvation a risk in the mid/late game, and not just in the beginning. Your thoughts on the matter are appreciated.
In the new system, every food item belongs to a food category, and each food category provides survivors that eat it with a bonus. Every time survivors go to eat, they only need one food item to fully replenish their nutrition, but they will eat one of each food category that is available, in order to gain more bonuses. If no food of any category can be found, survivors will starve as before.
Day/Night
There is now real night in Judgment! At this point, the change is only visual, we are still considering if/what mechanics can be added around this. Ideas are always welcome.
New Content
A new demon - Caorthannach, the fire spitting demon was added.
There are 4 new random events providing new challenges and rewards.
Existing random events now provide more rewards when solved.
7 new items and 2 new survivor traits were added as well.
Note that while we add a little content every update to keep things interesting, we are focusing more on mechanics and polish during the Early Access. Our plan is to add the bulk of the content in the finished version of the game, including the main story. This way even those players that played in the early access will enjoy a whole new world of content in the finished version.
Survivor AI
In some situations, the survivor AI that assigned tasks was acting sub-par. It already contained many very specific conditions to prioritize specific tasks, and was starting to feel like patchwork. In order to improve it, we decided we had to rewrite the whole thing from scratch, using a more simplified utility-based AI architecture. While the changes appear to be minor, it took almost a week to rewrite and re-test the AI while maintaining (most of) the original behaviour.
The new AI is much simpler, we solved some issues in which survivors didn’t behave as a player would expect them to, and it’s now much easier for us to add or modify the AI as needed.
It pains us to spend so much time of an update on a feature that seems to have little impact on the game, but it was necessary and is now behind us.
Localization Support
Definitely a beginner’s mistake - large parts of the game’s text were not in a separate language file. Texts were spread all around our configuration files, and worse, some of them were hard coded. We spent a very large portion of this update in locating and moving all the texts into dedicated language files, and it is now possible for us to support additional languages!
While the infrastructure is there, official support for additional languages will not be added before we exit from Early Access, since there are too many and too frequent changes to justify the extra work in translating and testing every build we release. But there is a bright side, since we now have all the texts in a separate language file, community translation mods are now a possibility! More on this in the mods section.
Modding Support Step 1
First step of modding support allows modders to add, remove or modify Items, Research, Scavenge locations and all the game's texts.
Community members can now create translation mods by modifying the texts in the original language files. This is limited to languages that our fonts support, at the moment (latin alphabet).
A demo mod is bundled with the game (but deactivated by default), that adds Aliens to Judgment. It adds a whole Alien research tree, an alien blaster, grenade, and a crashed alien ship scavenge location. Note: The alien mod is meant to demonstrate the modding capabilities, and is not meant to be a meaningful addition to the game. It was not well balanced or tested.
<*>Mechanics: It is now possible to move some objects, mainly workstations built indoors.
<*>Mechanics: It is now possible to rotate many objects when building.
<*>Mechanics: The survivor AI has been re-written. The new system is more robust and solves several behaviour issues.
<*>Mechanics: New food system & food balancing. Food are now divided to categories, and each category provides bonuses to survivors that it it.
<*>Mechanics: Added Day/Night cycle. At the moment the mechanic is visual only, we are still considering if/what kind of gameplay effects it should have.
<*>Usability: When trying to build something but not enough resources, it now appears red.
<*>Usability: When equiping survivors, if no items available for that slot, it will now show appropriate text instead of an empty window.
<*>Usability: Show tutorials is now checked by default only in the first game (user can still enable it when starting additional games from the new game window)
<*>Usability: The rituals tutorial window will now pop automatically when researching rituals, if tutorials are enabled.
<*>Usability: Changed the layout of the research information window so things appear clearer and text is not cut out.
<*>Usability: Selecting a single survivor and right clicking an object will now show an option to create task + assign (previously needed to create task first, and then right click to assign).
<*>Usability: Changed display in resource bar to be more consistent. Food & Water now show amount of resources instead of hours remaining.
<*>Usability: Pause button now blinks in red when game is paused, so players can notice it more easily.
<*>Usability: Error messages are now displayed in the center of the screen for a short time, and an error sound is played.
<*>Content: New demon - Caorthannach, the fire spitting demon.
<*>Content: Added 4 new random events: Blackbox, Desperate Times, Eureka & Dark Curse.
<*>Content: Added new items: Werewolf Pendant, Quarterstaff, Sledgehammer, Wooden Shield, Metal Shield, Ginger Extract & Sandalwood Bracelet.
<*>Content: Added new traits: Adventurous, Clever
<*>Modding: Language file can now be modified so community translations are possible. The Wiki will be updated to provide instructions soon.
<*>Modding: Users can now create and use mods that add/modify items, research and scavenge locations. See the modding documentation for more info.
<*>Visual: Added a subtle animation when opening/closing windows.
<*>Visual: Survivors are less likely to start with hats now (players can still add them in the survivor customization window).
<*>Visual: Changed some hat colors so they are not all gray/blue.
<*>Visual: Added shadows to some objects that were missing them.
<*>Visual: When finishing the last mission of the Early Access version, there is now a visual ending and not just textual.
<*>Visual: Added more pant options.
<*>Visual: Mission summary now only shows the "Other" section if there is anything to report.
<*>Visual: Replaced the search animation (survivors now crouch while searching debris)
<*>Visual: Healing ability now has a short effect when used.
<*>Audio: Added error sound, new sound for enemy attacks and healing abilities.
<*>Balancing: Sheep farm now costs wheat (which is also needed to feed the sheep).
<*>Balancing: Removed stone cost from Water Conservation research, and added it to Rainwater Collection.
<*>Balancing: Hex Scroll duration reduced to 10 seconds.
<*>Balancing: Rain dance ritual now boosts farm growth rate in addition to not needing tending. It also no longer costs food to perform, so it is a viable way to speed up food production.
<*>Balancing: Increased duration of Soul Harness and Demon Stamina rituals.
<*>Balancing: Reduced demonite costs of Mutate ritual.
<*>Balancing: Reduced metals cost of Divine Inspiration ritual.
<*>Balancing: Industrial areas are now a bit more likely to have metals for scavenge.
<*>Balancing: Some random events can only happen once now.
<*>Balancing: Night Howls and Bad Omens now earn a reward when completed.
<*>Performance: Opening the research window is now much faster.
<*>Performance: When multi-building (with shift), or attempting to build in an invalid position, the build UI will reopen, but continue smoothly.
<*>Fixed Bug: Unexpected errors when survivor had no hat.
<*>Fixed Bug: When selecting an object for the first time, it always showed a tree image instead of the selected object.
<*>Fixed Bug: When selecting a construction object it now shows the name of what is being built instead of "Construction"
<*>Fixed Bug: Legion creature was missing a description.
<*>Fixed Bug: Projectile animations were animating incorrectly in 2x speed.
<*>Fixed Bug: Survivors would automatically shoot at enemies in fog of war if they were in their range (sniper rifles), and the enemies would not react.
<*>Fixed Bug: When an enemy attacked a survivor and then disappeared in the fog of war it would cause him to become stuck.
<*>Fixed Bug: When training, survivors would shoot at a nearby dead enemy (right after combat) instead of the training dummies.
<*>Fixed Bug: Ending combat with a survivor moving would mess up their animations and make them uncontrollable when they got back to base.
<*>Fixed Bug: Sometimes female characters were referred to as "He" in random event texts.
<*>Fixed Bug: Can no longer unpause the game without closing the random event window (which caused the combat section to be skipped).
<*>Fixed Bug: Growth ritual will no longer generate trees inside buildings.
Alpha 9 on beta branch
Alpha 9
Hello Survivors,
We're happy to announce that alpha 9 is now available in the beta branch! This month has been a bit shorter and tougher than usual. We had some personal vacations, some technical challenges, and some painstaking work that had to be done to enable localization. More on all that in the update below.
A lot of the additions in this update came directly from requests and recommendations of our Early Access players. We value the community's feedback and are always listening and asking for more. Please keep letting us know what you think, how we can improve, and coming up with cool ideas. We can't do this without you!
We’d like to thank you all for your support and your patience, and we hope this update will add to your game experience. Without further delay, here are the main changes in alpha 9. The full list of changes can be found as usual in the end of this post.
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.
Players were complaining that these two were missing from day 1. There were some technical difficulties in implementing these features, since we didn't plan for them ahead of time (yes, beginner's mistake...). Well, we managed to overcome these difficulties, and it's now possible to rotate many of the objects you can build. This is mostly functional and not aesthetic, so most square objects can't be rotated, and others only have two directions (horizontal or vertical).
Let us know what you think of these limitations, since the objects are 2D we need to work on every additional direction separately and mostly prefer to add new stuff.
In addition, it's now possible to move some objects, mainly workstations that are built inside the cabins. Moving an object doesn't require any resources, but it does take time to build it again in the new position.
New Food System
While keeping survivors fed felt a bit of a challenge in the first or second playthrough, it quickly became trivial, and was just an annoying thing that needed to be done without much challenge or benefit.
Our goal is to change this, and make food a more important and interesting part of the game. This rehaul of the food system is a first step, we are still considering ways to make starvation a risk in the mid/late game, and not just in the beginning. Your thoughts on the matter are appreciated.
In the new system, every food item belongs to a food category, and each food category provides survivors that eat it with a bonus. Every time survivors go to eat, they only need one food item to fully replenish their nutrition, but they will eat one of each food category that is available, in order to gain more bonuses. If no food of any category can be found, survivors will starve as before.
Day/Night
There is now real night in Judgment! At this point, the change is only visual, we are still considering if/what mechanics can be added around this. Ideas are always welcome.
New Content
A new demon - Caorthannach, the fire spitting demon was added.
There are 4 new random events providing new challenges and rewards.
Existing random events now provide more rewards when solved.
7 new items and 2 new survivor traits were added as well.
Note that while we add a little content every update to keep things interesting, we are focusing more on mechanics and polish during the Early Access. Our plan is to add the bulk of the content in the finished version of the game, including the main story. This way even those players that played in the early access will enjoy a whole new world of content in the finished version.
Survivor AI
In some situations, the survivor AI that assigned tasks was acting sub-par. It already contained many very specific conditions to prioritize specific tasks, and was starting to feel like patchwork. In order to improve it, we decided we had to rewrite the whole thing from scratch, using a more simplified utility-based AI architecture. While the changes appear to be minor, it took almost a week to rewrite and re-test the AI while maintaining (most of) the original behaviour.
The new AI is much simpler, we solved some issues in which survivors didn’t behave as a player would expect them to, and it’s now much easier for us to add or modify the AI as needed.
It pains us to spend so much time of an update on a feature that seems to have little impact on the game, but it was necessary and is now behind us.
Localization Support
Definitely a beginner’s mistake - large parts of the game’s text were not in a separate language file. Texts were spread all around our configuration files, and worse, some of them were hard coded. We spent a very large portion of this update in locating and moving all the texts into dedicated language files, and it is now possible for us to support additional languages!
While the infrastructure is there, official support for additional languages will not be added before we exit from Early Access, since there are too many and too frequent changes to justify the extra work in translating and testing every build we release. But there is a bright side, since we now have all the texts in a separate language file, community translation mods are now a possibility! More on this in the mods section.
Modding support step 1 - Items & Langauge
Step 1 in modding support is rather basic, but it’s a first step. Members of the community can now modify the items file, to add new items or modify existing ones. It’s also possible to add new icons to be used by the new items.
In addition, community members can now create translation mods by modifying the texts in the original language files. This is limited to languages that our fonts support, at the moment (latin alphabet).
We’ll be adding more elaborate modding documentation real soon, in the meantime if you’d like to create a mod or a translation, feel free to contact us at contact@suncrash.com, we’ll gladly cooperate.
Plans for the future include Steam Workshop support to share your mods, and in-game UI that allows you to enable/disable mods.
Full Change List
<*>Mechanics: It is now possible to move some objects, mainly workstations built indoors.
<*>Mechanics: It is now possible to rotate many objects when building.
<*>Mechanics: The survivor AI has been re-written. The new system is more robust and solves several behaviour issues.
<*>Mechanics: New food system & food balancing. Food are now divided to categories, and each category provides bonuses to survivors that it it.
<*>Mechanics: Added Day/Night cycle. At the moment the mechanic is visual only, we are still considering if/what kind of gameplay effects it should have.
<*>Usability: When trying to build something but not enough resources, it now appears red.
<*>Usability: When equiping survivors, if no items available for that slot, it will now show appropriate text instead of an empty window.
<*>Usability: Show tutorials is now checked by default only in the first game (user can still enable it when starting additional games from the new game window)
<*>Usability: The rituals tutorial window will now pop automatically when researching rituals, if tutorials are enabled.
<*>Usability: Changed the layout of the research information window so things appear clearer and text is not cut out.
<*>Usability: Selecting a single survivor and right clicking an object will now show an option to create task + assign (previously needed to create task first, and then right click to assign).
<*>Usability: Changed display in resource bar to be more consistent. Food & Water now show amount of resources instead of hours remaining.
<*>Usability: Pause button now blinks in red when game is paused, so players can notice it more easily.
<*>Usability: Error messages are now displayed in the center of the screen for a short time, and an error sound is played.
<*>Content: New demon - Caorthannach, the fire spitting demon.
<*>Content: Added 4 new random events: Blackbox, Desperate Times, Eureka & Dark Curse.
<*>Content: Added new items: Werewolf Pendant, Quarterstaff, Sledgehammer, Wooden Shield, Metal Shield, Ginger Extract & Sandalwood Bracelet.
<*>Content: Added new traits: Adventurous, Clever
<*>Modding: Language file can now be modified so community translations are possible. The Wiki will be updated to provide instructions soon.
<*>Modding: Users can now create and use mods that add/modify items. The Wiki will be updated to provide instructions soon.
<*>Visual: Added a subtle animation when opening/closing windows.
<*>Visual: Survivors are less likely to start with hats now (players can still add them in the survivor customization window).
<*>Visual: Changed some hat colors so they are not all gray/blue.
<*>Visual: Added shadows to some objects that were missing them.
<*>Visual: When finishing the last mission of the Early Access version, there is now a visual ending and not just textual.
<*>Visual: Added more pant options.
<*>Visual: Mission summary now only shows the "Other" section if there is anything to report.
<*>Visual: Replaced the search animation (survivors now crouch while searching debris)
<*>Visual: Healing ability now has a short effect when used.
<*>Audio: Added error sound, new sound for enemy attacks and healing abilities.
<*>Balancing: Sheep farm now costs wheat (which is also needed to feed the sheep).
<*>Balancing: Removed stone cost from Water Conservation research, and added it to Rainwater Collection.
<*>Balancing: Hex Scroll duration reduced to 10 seconds.
<*>Balancing: Rain dance ritual now boosts farm growth rate in addition to not needing tending. It also no longer costs food to perform, so it is a viable way to speed up food production.
<*>Balancing: Increased duration of Soul Harness and Demon Stamina rituals.
<*>Balancing: Reduced demonite costs of Mutate ritual.
<*>Balancing: Reduced metals cost of Divine Inspiration ritual.
<*>Balancing: Industrial areas are now a bit more likely to have metals for scavenge.
<*>Balancing: Some random events can only happen once now.
<*>Balancing: Night Howls and Bad Omens now earn a reward when completed.
<*>Performance: Opening the research window is now much faster.
<*>Performance: When multi-building (with shift), or attempting to build in an invalid position, the build UI will reopen, but continue smoothly.
<*>Fixed Bug: Unexpected errors when survivor had no hat.
<*>Fixed Bug: When selecting an object for the first time, it always showed a tree image instead of the selected object.
<*>Fixed Bug: When selecting a construction object it now shows the name of what is being built instead of "Construction"
<*>Fixed Bug: Legion creature was missing a description.
<*>Fixed Bug: Projectile animations were animating incorrectly in 2x speed.
<*>Fixed Bug: Survivors would automatically shoot at enemies in fog of war if they were in their range (sniper rifles), and the enemies would not react.
<*>Fixed Bug: When an enemy attacked a survivor and then disappeared in the fog of war it would cause him to become stuck.
<*>Fixed Bug: When training, survivors would shoot at a nearby dead enemy (right after combat) instead of the training dummies.
<*>Fixed Bug: Ending combat with a survivor moving would mess up their animations and make them uncontrollable when they got back to base.
<*>Fixed Bug: Sometimes female characters were referred to as "He" in random event texts.
Alpha 8 available on main branch
Alpha 8
It's been a very busy month, working on alpha 8 and participating in Gamescom. Finally, alpha 8 is here, available in the main branch, and we are very happy with this new build.
This build is varied, with new content, new mechanics, usability fixes and even some cool new customization options. A new combat biome and several visual effect improvemenets have been introduced.
Here are the main changes (including changes from alpha 7.2 which never made it to the main branch). Full list of changes can be found at the bottom.
Note: Unfortunately with all these major changes we were unable to support saved games from previous alpha versions. You will have to start a new game
Survivor Appearance and Customization
From now you can customize survivor appearance at any time. Don't just rename survivors as friends & family, customize their appearance so they actually resemble them. Beware though, friendships have been ruined in the past when survivors representing friends die horribly.
In addition, survivors now have hats! Hats are randomly generated and can be manually selected from the survivor customization window.
In-game encyclopedia
By right clicking any item, object or tech, you can see detailed information about this item. From the information window you can access the required research or raw materials, allowing you to navigate through the items until you figure out exactly what you need to craft that cool new 50 caliber sniper rifle.
Automatic crafting
No more micro-managing multi-clicking food production. Right click and craftable item and from the information window, set up automatic crafting. You can define minimum and maximum values and make sure you always have a sufficient supply of boards, scraps or any other resource.
Survivor Grouping
Survivors can now be grouped together by clicking CTRL + a number key, just like RTS games. This allows easier control during combat, separate ranged groups from melee and control them all at once.
Random Events
New random events infrastructure allows us to create complex, ongoing, branching, multi-step random events. 5 new random events have been added to make the game more interesting, and many more will follow in our next few updates.
New Creature: Legion
Legion is a huge hulk of a demon, very slow but very durable with strong armor. Weaker weapons can barely penetrate its hide, so use high damage weapons from afar if you want to survive this one.
Suburbs
A new biome for missions has been added - the suburbs. These once peaceful surroundings have been devastated by demonkind as much as any other place, but some can still sense how peaceful this are used to be, before the rubble and dead bodies.
Weapons, Research, Objects
New early game consumables, mid-game and late-game ranged weapons have been added, and all weapons in game have been re-balanced so that the difference between different weapon tiers is more notable. Some weapons are clearly better suited against stronger, armored enemies while others are better at picking off several weaker creatures.
In addition several new research subjects were added, coming soon subjects were implemented, and new objects such as a passive water collector have been introduced.
Full change list
<*>Mechanics: Can now customize survivors appearance.
<*>Mechanics: Can now set up items to be crafted automatically within a customizable minimum-maximum range.
<*>Usability: Added an in-game encyclopedia that can be accessed by right clicking any item, object or tech.
<*>Usability: Can now define survivor groups and select them, similar to RTS games.
<*>Usability: Weapons now show their DPS and DPS vs enemies with armor rating of 5. This doesn't take accuracy into account.
<*>Usability: Objective part in story now colored blue so it stands out more.
<*>Usability: Resources are now always displayed, not just in base.
<*>Usability: Occult research is now performed in a dedicated workshop - the Occult Library. Rituals can now be performed in the magic circle without having to cancel the research task.
<*>Content: Created a new random event infrastructure and added 5 new random events.
<*>Content: New mid-game weapons made of iron.
<*>Content: New late game firearms.
<*>Content: New Creature: Legion.
<*>Content: New research technologies and "Coming Soon" techs implemented.
<*>Content: Added Rainwater collectors that gather water at a slower pace without survivor interaction.
<*>Content: New combat biome - random encounters can now happen in the suburbs, with all new art assets and atmosphere.
<*>Content: Added some early-game consumable items to add some more combat options earlier in the game.
<*>Visual: Random event notifications now have images that describe them.
<*>Visual: Changed stone house appearances.
<*>Visual: Survivors have more shirt & pant options.
<*>Visual: Survivors can have hats.
<*>Visuals: Tweaked the environment to provide a darker feel to the game.
<*>Visuals: Tweaked the survivor path indicator.
<*>Visuals: Replaced reaper and ghost attacks.
<*>Visuals: Replaced performing ritual effect.
<*>Balancing: When metals or minerals are running out in the map, there is a chance to discover new deposits.
<*>Balancing: Rebalanced all weapons so the increments between weapon tiers are more notable.
<*>Balancing: Enemy groups are now less likely to be nearby, so engaging one group at a time is more feasible.
<*>Balancing: Made some enemies a bit stronger, but less of them will appear.
<*>Balancing: Almost all building projects now take longer.
<*>Balancing: Mining iron is a bit slower now.
<*>Balancing: Mining minerals is much slower.
<*>AI: Tweaked melee AI a bit so they don't just run around survivors trying to attack from the back.
<*>AI: Melee enemies will now move towards their targets even if there is no free spot next to the target from which they can attack.
<*>Performance: Improved performance in large base attacks.<*>Fixed Issue: Sometimes rituals that should create trees, rocks or clay would create too little or none at all.
<*>Fixed Issue: Grass and other decorations will no longer appear outside of map area.
<*>Fixed Issue: Added option to disable environment effects so that the game runs smoothly with intel HD graphics.
Alpha 8 is available on beta branch
Alpha 8
It's been a very busy month, working on alpha 8 and participating in Gamescom. Finally, alpha 8 is here, and we are very happy with this new build.
This build is varied, with new content, new mechanics, usability fixes and even some cool new customization options.
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.
Here are the main changes. Full list of changes can be found at the bottom.
Note: Unfortunately with all these major changes we were unable to support saved games from previous alpha versions. You will have to start a new game
Survivor Appearance and Customization
From now you can customize survivor appearance at any time. Don't just rename survivors as friends & family, customize their appearance so they actually resemble them. Beware though, friendships have been ruined in the past when survivors representing friends die horribly.
In addition, survivors now have hats! Hats are randomly generated and can be manually selected from the survivor customization window.
In-game encyclopedia
By right clicking any item, object or tech, you can see detailed information about this item. From the information window you can access the required research or raw materials, allowing you to navigate through the items until you figure out exactly what you need to craft that cool new 50 caliber sniper rifle.
Automatic crafting
No more micro-managing multi-clicking food production. Right click and craftable item and from the information window, set up automatic crafting. You can define minimum and maximum values and make sure you always have a sufficient supply of boards, scraps or any other resource.
Survivor Grouping
Survivors can now be grouped together by clicking CTRL + a number key, just like RTS games. This allows easier control during combat, separate ranged groups from melee and control them all at once.
Random Events
New random events infrastructure allows us to create complex, ongoing, branching, multi-step random events. 5 new random events have been added to make the game more interesting, and many more will follow in our next few updates.
New Creature: Legion
Legion is a huge hulk of a demon, very slow but very durable with strong armor. Weaker weapons can barely penetrate its hide, so use high damage weapons from afar if you want to survive this one.
Weapons, Research, Objects
New mid-game and late-game ranged weapons have been added, and all weapons in game have been re-balanced so that the difference between different weapon tiers is more notable. Some weapons are clearly better suited against stronger, armored enemies while others are better at picking off several weaker creatures.
In addition several new research subjects were added, coming soon subjects were implemented, and new objects such as a passive water collector have been introduced.
Full change list
<*> Mechanics - Can now customize survivors appearance.
<*> Mechanics - Can now set up items to be crafted automatically within a customizable minimum-maximum range.
<*> Usability - Added an in-game encyclopedia that can be accessed by right clicking any item, object or tech.
<*> Usability - Can now define survivor groups and select them, similar to RTS games.
<*> Usability - Weapons now show their DPS and DPS vs enemies with armor rating of 5. This doesn't take accuracy into account.
<*> Usability - Objective part in story now colored blue so it stands out more.
<*> Content - Created a new random event infrastructure and added 5 new random events.
<*> Content - New mid-game weapons made of iron.
<*> Content - New late game firearms.
<*> Content - New Creature: Legion.
<*> Content - New research technologies and "Coming Soon" techs implemented.
<*> Content - Added Rainwater collectors that gather water at a slower pace without survivor interaction.
<*> Visual - Random event notifications now have images that describe them.
<*> Visual - Changed stone house appearances.
<*> Visual - Survivors have more shirt & pant options.
<*> Visual - Survivors can have hats.
<*> Balancing - When metals or minerals are running out in the map, there is a chance to discover new deposits.
<*> Balancing - Rebalanced all weapons so the increments between weapon tiers are more notable.
<*> Balancing - Enemy groups are now less likely to be nearby, so engaging one group at a time is more feasible.
<*> Fixed Issue - Sometimes rituals that should create trees, rocks or clay would create too little or none at all.
<*> Fixed Issue - Grass and other decorations will no longer appear outside of map area.
<*> Fixed Issue - Added option to disable environment effects so that the game runs smoothly with intel HD graphics.
Gamescom and Alpha 8 progress
Survivors,
This is a short update on what we've been up to in the past couple of weeks and what you can expect in the near future.
First, we are proud to announce that we will be part of the Indie Arena Booth, in Gamescom on August 17 - 21. If you happen to be in Cologne, Germany for this great event, we would love for you to drop by and say hello. This is a very exciting chance for us to meet in person and chat with players that enjoy our game. This is the first time we present Judgment in a show of such scale and are very enthusiastic about it. Thank you Indie Arena for having us with you!
During the show, players will be able to stop by our booth and play the brand new alpha 8, which will be released on steam right after the show. There will also be Judgment shirts to be had!
We've spent most our time lately working on the new features of alpha 8. Progress has been good lately, although we inevitably have to spend some of our time preparing for the conference.
Due to the short time frame, alpha 7.2 will not be released on the main branch. The next update to the main branch will be alpha 8. Of course alpha 7.2 is and will remain available on the beta branch, until such time.
Here's a small peak of some of the stuff that you can expect to see in alpha 8.
Alpha 7.2 available in beta branch
Alpha 7.2
Work on alpha 8 is taking a bit longer than expected, so in the meantime we decided to release a smaller update. A larger update with more content will come soon. Many visual improvements and some new content have been added.
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.
Patch Changes
<*>Usability: Resources are now always displayed, not just in base.
<*>Usability: Occult research is now performed in a dedicated workshop - the Occult Library. Rituals can now be performed in the magic circle without having to cancel the research task.
<*>Content: New combat biome - random encounters can now happen in the suburbs, with all new art assets and atmosphere.
<*>Content: Added some early-game consumable items to add some more combat options earlier in the game.
<*>Balancing: Made some enemies a bit stronger, but less of them will appear.
<*>Balancing: Almost all building projects now take longer.
<*>Balancing: Mining iron is a bit slower now.
<*>Balancing: Mining minerals is much slower.
<*>Visuals: Tweaked the environment to provide a darker feel to the game.
<*>Visuals: Tweaked the survivor path indicator.
<*>Visuals: Replaced reaper and ghost attacks.
<*>Visuals: Replaced performing ritual effect.
<*>AI: Tweaked melee AI a bit so they don't just run around survivors trying to attack from the back.
<*>AI: Melee enemies will now move towards their targets even if there is no free spot next to the target from which they can attack.
<*>Performance: Improved performance in large base attacks.
