Hello everyone! This week's WIP update will be another feature showcase of the accessories system that we had just finished. To not make things too long, let's start immediately shall we?
As we've shown you on accessories assembly a few weeks ago, there's only a few things left on the system and we'd like to show you the in-game footage of their usage. The sample here shows an armor part, shoulders, with three accessories attached making it bulkier and something one of our developers personally like.
Onto the painting of accessories! We first worked to have it inherit color from the attached part, but a very strong campaign by you all made us realize that we should take more time to make them better, so here they are. Each accessories will have 2 sub-elements each as shown here A1 and A2, B1 and B2, and so on if you attach more accessories (see those blank boxes?), and you can choose to paint them however you want
Accessories will use the same painting system as other parts so fear not, it'll be something that you're all already familiar with. This should allow you to take control the instant you get to play with them.
In this coming update, we'll also improve the Quality of Life when working with painting the M.A.S.S. unit and all its part with an implementation of a global style system. The system will allow you to use the same style all over Armor/Weapon/Frame/Accessory parts. Custom styles will still be the same, global styles are just an addition for ease of cross-part painting.
You can also import the global styles from other frames. If you import other data, you can transfer the parts and everything and immediately apply the global style from your frame, or vice versa, import the global styles from other frames you have and you'll end up giving your frames the styles from another frame with ease.
Hello everyone, today will be a very short update on the NPC and design side, showing how they will be implemented and shown in-game.
Aside from new actions that gives a bit more life to the NPCs, we're also adding more effects to their interactions.
And lastly, we'd like to show you some NPC concept and designs that will be involved with the story in Chapter 3, far away in the future patches...
Now we know that you'd like more information and previews on the coming accessory parts, so we'll assure you this. We are working to make the system done ASAP and hope that we'll be able to show you more by next week.
Discord: discord.gg/quS7E46 Nolt: bit.ly/3wpWofe
WIP: Accessory System Assemble Process Preview
Hello everyone, we're ready to show you more of the accessory system, and how its assembly progress will be. We hope this will give you a heads up on how you're going to use them to create a very unique M.A.S.S. of your own in the coming 0.7.0 update.
As we have mentioned before, the accessory system will be similar to decals, so you'll have the same click to select position function available. We have also improved the QoL of gamepad users by reworking the function and created a virtual cursor to help placing both accessories and decals. Hope this will help you all in the customizing your M.A.S.S. unit.
After placement, you can set the offset of the accessory piece for more positioning works you'd like to do, as well as adjusting their rotation in the three provided axis.
Here's also a preview on the scaling functions that we've said a few weeks ago and how you can scale them non-uniform. Combining this with the offset and rotation that can be done, we hope you will be able to create a one-of-a-kind accessory that matches what is in your mind.
And to help you all in utilizing more than one accessories, we have the "alignment" function that allows you to copy a piece of accessory so you can just offset it to another position, or straight up mirror it onto a selected axis of your choice with all the rotations and scaling that you've set up before.
And to help everyone see a clearer picture when customizing a M.A.S.S. unit, we have created a masking function that allows you to just see the single part you're customizing, so as to not have other parts hinder your vision in any degree and from any viewpoint, not seeing parts overlapping with each other with ease.
Finally, we're here to say that all functions above also apply to weapons customization, no worries there, you will be able to fully accessorize your weapons in the same way your armor parts can be. In addition to that, accessories that are attached to "motion" parts will also take that motion into account, just like what you can see from the image here.
We hope this clears up a lot on how the accessory features will work, and help you prepare in advance for the customization option coming in 0.7.0! See you later next week!
Hello! As a short update this week, we're here to show you more about the NPCs that we're updating in 0.7.0. As we have mentioned in our previous updates, each of our NPCs will be having more actions to them, to provide them more "life" and not be a static image and not moving in every interaction in the game.
This week, there aren't any gifs available for you, but images of the early accessories system. Let's take a look shall we?
We'd like start showing accessories with some basic shape concept designs. We think that basic shapes are one of the best accessories that will be available, as they can be used to fulfill a great amount of design gaps in armor parts, and doesn't have anything that seemed "too much" that it limits your usage.
This image here is a sample of non-uniform scaling for an accessory part. You can stretch and scale them however you'd like and create a perfect accessory for your part, now let's see how it'll look on an armor.
Here is a sample onto the Kaiser leg part, attached with some basic shape accessories. We're trying to make it very flexible and able to represent whatever your imagination wanted, we believe this will allow you to create a very unique item that is yours truly.
In time, more will be available, and we're taking a good hard look at your suggestions for accessories designs (bless you all in the suggestions channel and the Nolt feedback hub).
Hello everyone! As we teased NPCs redesign in our "what's next" in 0.7.0 post a few weeks ago, we wanted to show you how the changes are being done. Our artist had been hard working herself over the years and we wanted to give her a chance to show her improvements. We are not trying to change the characters themselves here, and we're sure that the finished product in-game will be appealing to look at alongside the game's art direction.
Also, here are some wallpapers available to anyone interested. Click on the image for full size!
#Discord: discord.gg/quS7E46
WIP: Accessories System Sneak Peek
As some of you might have guessed, we don't have much for this week's update, so let's take a sneak peek at the development of the accessories system shall we? First, we'll be limiting them to a maximum of 8 pieces per each armor part. That means you can have at most 8 accessories for the left shoulder, and another 8 on the right shoulder, so that's a lot of accessories if you're willing to spend the time to put them on every part of your M.A.S.S. unit.
Now, you might see a very similar UI here. Well, we've based our accessories system on the decals system so it's almost all the same here, adjust being almost the same with offsetting, scaling, and etc. but the difference here is that they can be scaled uniform or non-uniform. For that, we've also added a new functionality called "Align." This new menu will allow you to select an accessory as a reference point and align another accessory to that point, and by align we meant you're able to copy all settings from the reference point into another decal and also mirror them on another plane. Let's say you're putting a spherical accessory part at the frontside of a shoulder, you can use "align" to mirror another accessory with the same or different design in true reference to that first spherical accessory.
That's all we can say for now, and let us remind you, this is still a very early phase in the system's development. We are extremely happy if you can come and discuss with us how you'd like for the feature to come out through our discord with other players
Discord: discord.gg/quS7E46
What's Next 0.7.0
Recapping 0.6.0
So, after weeks of lateness, we were able to launch 0.6.0 to quite a... non-problematic level. There were no critical bugs that needed fixing, challenges modes and improved AIs were quite well received, but we've also been reading feedbacks on their difficulties and differences from the last patches. All in all, after a few hotfixes here and there, we think it is time we conclude the 0.6.x update and move on to developing 0.7.0 which will arrive in a few months.
What's next for 0.7.0
Let's call the next update as the "art" update. The main protagonist of the next update is a system called Accessories, which had a button without use in-game since day 1. We'd like to first explain how the system will work in a summarized image below.
Accessories
Accessories are first conceptualized as a "3D decal system" where players can attach small parts onto armors and weapons, making a unique creation of their own, specializing them and fulfilling their imagination, and we've been introducing them to everyone's who been following their developments as such.
Accessories will range from geometric shapes to complex parts, and you will be able to attach them to most surface of EVERY part itself.
So, in this coming 0.7.0 update, our team will be fully devoting their time to work on the system and if you're asking about the amounts we're making, let's just say we'll add as much as we can until deadline arrives.
On that note, you all have been extremely vocal on how we should further develop the system. Certain people have been campaigning about how to improve them as we discussed more and more on how the system would work, and we've been reading months and months of your discussions.
Now, let us say that a lot of your suggestions made the cut, such as the amount of accessories available to be attached, are a lot more than we first thought of it, separated coloring system, as well as the mirroring of accessory parts over an axis. We'll continue to reveal more as the update progress, stay tuned..
Decals
As we've mentioned about accessories, we cannot leave Decals alone in this ART update and we have decided that in 0.7.0, we'll be doing a clean sweep to find bugs and increasing the amount of decals that can be attached on every part to 8.
Global styles
Painting your M.A.S.S. had been quite a tedious task, and we've heard complaints of how frustrating it is for you all the carefully setup styles for painting armors, then needing to redo them all over with your weapons. 0.7.0 will introduce "Global Styles" to help with that.
NPC Illustrations
There have been a great concern over the art style of our NPC illustrations since day 1, and we're very excited to tell you that we'll be overhauling and improving them all in the upcoming 0.7.0 update. We are not able to say more during this time, so have a sneak peek on their early drafts here.
Performance Issues
With all of these being added into the game, there is a certain challenge that we'll need to overcome before we are able to release them and that is PERFORMANCE ISSUES. In technical terms, all these added decals and accessories will demand more from your PC, and while you might not feel their effect on your own, we are looking forward to when multiplayer drops much much later into development, and how we could optimize them early so not to have an effect we needed to fix down the line.
That will be all for today, we hope that you will have fun with 0.6.5 and look forward to 0.7.0. If there's anything you'd like to discuss or any ideas you'd like to suggest, you're very welcome to come and have a discussion with us and other players in our discord, linked below.
Added a new game mode, challenge. There are three challenges at the moment, Battlegrounds, Breach, and Boss Rush, and each has its own special ruleset.
Added a new armor set, the Panzer with its variations.
Added 6 new poses to the photographing mode.
Added new Visual Effects when transitioning into Extended and Empowered Combo for melee attacks.
Added new camera tracking system and shifting for close combat.
Added new range weapons stances.
Added 20 new Close Combat (Assaulters and Grips) and 6 new Shield (Handles and Shells) parts.
Added Primal Quarks into the game. Primal Quarks are another version of the Quarks players faced before, with new and stronger attacks.
Improvements
Improved enemy spawning mechanics. Now bosses will always have the most basic Quarks in their area to help players replenish ammo.
Improved most bosses' attack patterns, behaviors, and reworked some of the bosses to be more challenging. They will also have varying attacks in different difficulties.
Improved most Quarks attack patterns to have them attack roughly much more frequently from every direction when they surround a player.
Increased Credits gain multipliers from various sources.
Improved Thrusters VFX
Improved UI effects and optimization, you might now see some distortion with some notifications and menus. There is also a slight skewing in various UI to provide a more "monitor screen" feel to the game.
Improved mission selection UI.
Improved input responsiveness, players should now be able to continue moving after an interruption.
Improved Mission 8 performance.
Adjustments
Composite Nanorobotics, Full Metal Jacket, and Binary Monarch has been split into two nodes. Their downsides have also been split between these two nodes, so players can choose how they want to approach these benefits and downsides.
Replaced Energy Regulator and Overdrive Systems with a more generic node as well as playstyle changer node, providing more methods to tinker with benefits and demerits.
Replaced Efficient Thrusters II and Afterburners II with a situational boost tech, providing something similar to an invincibility frame at the moment at the cost of Fuel Burn Rate. Please check them out.
Adjusted Close Combat weapons stopping power, they will now stop enemies more frequently.
Slightly adjusted Close Combat combo damage for both ground and air attacks. Latter parts of the attack combo will hit for more damage than combo starts and dash attacks.
Removed Weight calculations from all weapons. With that said, we have also reduced other stats that are tied to acceleration from almost every node to balance the benefits gained from the removal of weights except for nodes that are dedicated to acceleration itself.
ALL shooters have their damage tweaked by a very little margin (around +- 5%).
Detonator ammo is reduced by around 50% unless you invested into Magazine Load, which will reduce that number to around a 25% nerf instead.
Adjusted warhead bullet launcher's damage multiplier to be higher by around 40%.
Adjusted bullet and energy cell drop algorithm and enemy spawn in boss rooms. As long as you defeat the constantly spawning Quarks, you will have ammo.
Adjusted enemy's property weakness down a notch. Using the advantage property will now deal up to 50% more damage to enemies.
Removed Nitrogenic Slugs and added a generic node alongside another non-generic node.
Redistributed blueprints droplist. Story missions will be a more targeted drop while Hunting Grounds have a larger drop pool and Challenge Missions have the largest amount of blueprints available.
Moved Weapon Slots related nodes towards Resource and Item drop nodes. Players that have more weapons that allowed equipment will not be forced to remove them, but you will not be able to re-equip them unless you developed the new weapon slot nodes.
Reworked most of the property damage nodes as well as shield-based nodes to promote the playstyle properly.
Balancing Hydraulics has been integrated into Protective Coating and Saintess Bulwark. They now have an increased total attack buff on lowering shields. Balancing Hydraulics is also replaced with a shield node that provides another shield-based playstyle.
Adjusted Photograph Mode BGM to our own original soundtrack.
Bug Fixes
Fixed some parts' decals not showing correctly on some parts.
Fixed some parts disorientation.
Fixed Accelerated Boosters not able to be equipped correctly in its tier.
Fixed shields recovery not working correctly with nodes that reduce shields regeneration.
Fixed some bugs that could cause crashes in Mission 8.
Fixed a notorious flashbang bug that happens randomly when painting parts.
0.6.1 + 0.6.2 + 0.6.3 + 0.6.4 + 0.6.5 Hotfixes
Fixed a typo on various places, please report them in and we'll fix them in the following hotfixes or update.
Reduced stamina damage of Auto, Ray, and Detonator shooters. Increased stamina damage of Wave shooters.
Reduced Gates of Ascension 2nd area boss Ultimate damage reduced by 20%.
Reduced Gates of Ascension 2nd area boss Ultimate's projectile numbers and speed to make it easier to dodge.
Adjusted Gates of Ascension 2nd area boss behaviors, it is now more responsive.
Fixed a bug that somehow made Gates of Ascension 5th area boss stood still or run into walls, it is now more active and befitting of a last boss.
Optimised enemy waves in Void Convergence more to reduce FPS drops in later waves with how much enemy projectiles are spawning.
Changed Blizzard Core functionality to prevent an unintended exploit of the tech.
Adjusted combo transition speed to make game flow for close combat better.
Adjusted spear pose hilarious self-clipping bug.
Fixed a lot of typo once again
Added descriptions on nodes like Composite Nanorobotics and Powered Nanorobotics to show they can stack with each other on their durability gain effect.
Fixed battle report screen showing blank pages instead of rewards.
Demo updated to 0.6.5
Re-introduced Texture streaming into the game. This will speed up game-startup and most likely fix launch problems for players showing only a black screen, sometimes resulting in fatal errors from not having enough VRAM or massive FPS drops. Some players might face lower-than-expected resolution for their textures. Please know that it is due to the game trying to maintain your FPS and performance. Consider lowering some options to help with the issue if faced with one.
Adjusted Story Mission "Unexpected Coordination" to not have the ally able to get destroyed.
Passive playstyle has emerged and it is deemed extremely strong. While we like everything to feel strong and have a variety of playstyle available, some concerns came up about it being stronger than active playstyle. We're nerfing the highest offenders by the following:
Saintess Bulwark added punishment, while guarding, -15% total attack.
Cryo-Coated Metals, Blizzard Core, Voltage Overload will not proc on-hit effects like Nanorobotics anymore.
Fixed a bug where item drops are extremely concentrated on one spot
Fixed Gates of Ascension 1st boss Ultimate skills not showing its full particle effects
More typo fixing!
Fixed some poses in Photography Mode that did not have a good grip on their weapon.
Fixed Hunting Grounds 2: Snowfield Custodian not spawning enemies if certain conditions are met.
Known Bugs: If you're one of the people facing these problems, please report it to us in Discord as we are trying to reproduce and fix the problem.
Unable to use "Abort Mission, Restart Mission, and Options" functions.
In Campaign and Hunting Grounds, some times there are enemies left over but the mission is completed.
Decals cannot be placed on a specific parts of an armor.
Sometimes, input does not register and you're unable to do anything for a few seconds.
Join discord: http://discord.gg/quS7E46
WIP: Complete Panzer Set and Patch Dates Announcement
Hello everyone! Today's WIP update features the complete Panzer Armor Set, showing the variations we've created for it.
On another important note, Update 0.6.0 will be released on March 6th GMT+7 (so around March 5th Western times). Again, we are extremely sorry the update has delayed this much, but we hope we're able to create something that was worth all the time spent developing them for you all. Patch notes next week!
