Praey for the Gods
1.0.002 Hotfix
- Fixed soft lock that was possible in Thrall cave
- Fixed soft lock that was possible in Satyr cave
- Fixed soft lock that was possible in cave near champion
- Fixed grappling hook causing the player to stick in the ground
- Fixed unequip button in prompts for controllers
- Fixed holes in ground around temple
- Fixed hole in cave near champion where you swim OOB
- Fixed lore notes in Thrall cave
Thanks again for your support
Tim
Champion hotfix
Praey for the Gods V1.0 Released!
We are incredibly excited to announce that Praey for the Gods V1.0 is now available on Steam!
This update contains the final 2 boss battles, the complete story from beginning to end and all Achievements!
There is also a substantial amount of optimizations, bug fixes, quality of life updates, thanks in large part to all the great feedback we have received through out Early Access. In addition the world is complete now, no more off limits areas, you are free to roam.
We would like to thank everyone for the time taken to give feedback, with your support we were able to make Praey for the Gods the game it is today. Please continue to send us your feedback, every bit of it helps us make Praey for the Gods even better.
V1.0 Game Update
Grief is tough
Jumping back into a global multiplatform launch mentality has been pretty daunting to say the least. For quite some time, making any kind of announcement simply felt too soon. Thankfully, with time, it is getting easier so we've taken the day to write this up. While this isn't everything we've been working on, it hopefully gives an idea of what to expect when we release v1.0.
Optimizations
We've been quietly working on the list of polish and optimizations we have left to do. During that time, we did discover some other additional optimizations that'll benefit pretty much everyone regardless of system specs or platform choice.
We'd like to share a few of those optimizations that'll be in the v1.0 release.
+ Improved proxies
Proxies are basically low resolution models that we use when unloading the sectors of the game that are far out in the distance. You can see the old ones currently in v5130 by turning down draw distance to 0. For v1.0, we've completely overhauled these proxies and made them look almost identical to the actual in game visuals thus allowing the game to run at a lower draw distance but still look and feel as if it were at a higher draw distance. This is probably the biggest improvement that will be seen by most players, as it improves visuals for low end systems but also allows for mid-tier systems to achieve improved visuals.
We've posted some images of both the latest development build and latest Early Access build. These were taken on a gaming laptop first with highest graphical settings and draw distance maxed, and then at its lowest setting. I did notice a small 2-3FPS drop when I took the screenshot using Windows screenshot tool so even these numbers are a little lower than what I saw in-game. Please understand these FPS results may not be the same for all systems but based on our tests there should be notable improvements for all.
FPS taken using Fraps
MSI GE66-Raider
i7-10750H CPU
GeForce RTX 2070 Super
32GB RAM
120hz monitor
+ Improved Overdraw (very helpful for GPU)
We've gone over every VFX in the game to reduce unnecessary particle counts. This again will help framerate across all platforms especially concerning low/mid end systems. The image above shows an example of the how much we've reduced overdraw. The VFX still look the same, but are much more performant.
+ Improved loading of game objects (very helpful for CPU)
Kind of tricky to show an image for this but the game does run better because of it:)
V1.0 Release when?
For now, we can say that the new bosses are ready and we've addressed nearly all feedback. Now we're fixing bugs, doing a lot of playtesting across all the platforms, and beginning on the launch trailer. Once those are complete, we'll have a date ready to share.
Thanks again for your support and patience.
Brian
PS: So I guess technically our game "released" on Xbox??
https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/25/22738056/microsoft-xbox-pc-games-steam-nvidia-geforce-now-streaming
GeForce Now is available on Xbox using their browser. if you own an Xbox and have a Steam key you can play the game using GeForce Now.
We've had a couple players reach out and let us know that it ran pretty well. Obviously, this depends on your internet connection but for those that can't run the game very well on their PC or simply want to see it on their TV/Xbox it's very possible.
V1.0 Release Update
As we've always been as transparent as we can be with you about our development, we want to give an update on our progress with the v1.0 release. Sometimes we take time to make adjustments in order to deliver a better game. Other times we take time because there are external factors that push our hand. This is one of those times where external factors have come into play.
As mentioned in a previous update, one of us has been dealing with an unexpected family emergency. This has unfortunately progressed to where they'll need some time away from work. In the meantime, we will continue to polish and finalize the game, but this means that we will not make our April release target as hoped. We're sorry that you'll have to wait a little longer, but we need to do what's right by our team and the people closest to them.
We're a small studio and we want to keep it that way. The downside is that when one of us needs to take some unexpected time away, it means that 33% of our company is suddenly not there. Even with that difficulty, we couldn't have started a studio and worked on the game if it wasn't for the direct support of our families and all of you. Releasing the game is how we can thank you; being there for our families in times of crisis is how we can thank them.
We also want to assure you that the v1.0 version of the game is still coming to consoles and Steam. When we're ready we'll be back with better news as this is certainly not the type of update we were expecting to share.
Thanks again for everything, and stay safe.
Brian
P.S.
We love seeing all of your pictures taken with Photo-Mode! They cheer us up, especially at times like this, and we can't thank you enough for sharing them with us. Thanks to Cats0521 for the cover image;). I think from here on out, we'll be using fan made images for blog posts as they capture the game so well. Also, we love to see your fan art so don't be shy about sharing them with us here on our Discord.
Discord.gg/praeyforthegods
Global Top Sellers!? What's in v1.0 release?
Holy crap Global Top Sellers this morning?! Whaaaa!?!?
That's insane! Thank you! This will no doubt help us to make the game even more awesome with a bunch of new feedback as well as sales of the game which directly supports future development.
This is great news!!
We've seen some people requesting some Quality of Life features that will be in our v1.0 release.
Honestly, there are A LOT of things we've been sitting on since our last update in Sept. As I mentioned in the last update here we held back on a smaller release because we thought we'd have v1.0 sooner and then we got hit with a bunch of un-fun life stuff so we're pushing to get it all into v1.0 so thank you for your patience.
Here are some of the features/updates coming in v1.0
:New Options/Difficulty Modes:
Story Mode
We're still adjusting this but this is basically how it works:
In Story Mode stats like hunger/sleep/cold will auto-regen overtime so you won't need to eat/sleep/heat
Weapons in Story mode won't break completely repairs are still possible but durability is basically moot
Cold won't do damage (you'll shiver in storms, and your aim will wobble but no health is lost)
We'll look to offer this similar to Boost or Survival modes. ie: Easy/Story or Normal/Story etc.
Brutal Difficulty
This is a really tough mode that I don't recommend most normal people play...it's really for that 1% of people that love pain. Thank Tim for this mode...I seriously can barely play it, Tim loves it. It is it's own difficulty so don't expect to see a Brutal/Story mode.
:New Features:
Boss Lock On
This is something we showed off in our last trailer running on the PS5. It's pretty awesome, and I can't wait to see how players use this.
Combat Lock On
This is a combat focused lock on. Allowing the player to strafe around enemies. Probably, one of the most requested features.
Adjustments
Optimized Destructibles
This was a pretty big undertaking and from that work we gained huge performance gains that also gets us better looking destruction that can make water splashes and dust debris, and better looking pre-destructed art.
Weapon Durability
Available in Story Mode, and I suspect post v1.0 we'll tune on this a little more. Ideally we found this to be a pain point for those that played Easy/Normal
Roll/dodge improvement
The roll/dodge moves a bit farther and faster now. I imagine we'll tweak on this a little more.
Improved Climb
We use a IK physics driven system with our climbing. So we dug in a little more to smooth out the climb most notably when she climbs down, as it was a bit too robotic.
Sail Cloth-to-Climb
This is one of those improvements that really need to be felt vs. seen but before if you sail clothed into a wall you'd need to let go of the sail cloth and THEN grab. That's been cleaned up to work much better.
Death pits removed
A number of the foggy death pits will be swapped out for water as we realized they only penalize players, replacing them with water which still can be a challenge but mostly in harder modes. This allows more opportunity for players to try new things with out the harsh penalty.
Animation improvements
We did some additional subtle passes on her animations. We also have mocap gloves as well as our
mocap suit so we have been making adjustments in animations as well as in the newer cutscenes.
Text in the inventory
We now have item descriptions for weapons/items etc.
In-game Help panel
Help is now accessible in the Inventory panel
:What Else is in v1.0?:
Obviously, the remaining two boss battles will be in as well as a big ol' final ending. We're also working out some additional story/lore points that we think is pretty cool and will open up some possibilities on where we take the game assuming people like it;) Also, some additional puzzles, champion tweaks, new weapons, and a bunch more to share soon.
We have a dev roadmap for those to check in on.
https://trello.com/b/4KETTtYc/praey-for-the-gods-development-roadmap
Feel free to ping us in our Discord too!
discord.gg/praeyforthegods
We're still looking at feedback too! so please feel free to send us feedback with our in-game feedback tool. We look at it daily and adjust/prioritize our efforts/features and also try to reach out to players which is a HUGE help when sorting out issues.
Thanks again and see you at v1.0 release!
Brian
Praey for the Gods development update!
Where have you been?
So 2020 was a steaming pile of s--t, I think we can all agree on that.
2021 still has some stink to it but we're definitely seeing the light.
The first part of 2020, I think we did ok with updates. However, the last 6 months have been insanely busy and challenging for us. With an extra level of ridiculousness in Jan/Feb when we had a bunch of unexpected things drop in our laps like massive power outages in Texas (where Tim currently resides) and horribly dire family news (f--k cancer). I wouldn't say any one thing was thee thing but it was more a build up especially when you add all the other "unique" parts of this last year.
Speaking on my own here, I've been doing game dev professionally for like 16-17 years, I've seen my fair share of crazy game development and this by far has been the wildest. Thankfully, I have my family right beside me. Literally. My son sits next to me doing zoom calls for school, while my daughter runs downstairs to show me her drawings. I enjoy getting to see them more however it certainly makes time management and focus a bit trickier. Typically, when you are shipping a game you see your friends/family a little less and your co-workers a little more as work intensifies. This has been the polar opposite, it's definitely not how I envisioned shipping my first game as a new studio...let alone any game really but here we are!
Sooo life is tough but is the game done?
Thankfully, we've reached our content complete check list early this month and are dealing with the final polish passes and final feedback. So yes, the game is "done". As of this week, we passed certification on Xbox One, and PS4/PS5 have been certified for a while now. There are a couple Kickstarter reward key things on the PS4/PS5 side but the big certification stuff is done. Which is a massive relief. I think a lot of people forget that we're releasing the game on consoles as well...without a publisher, or a third party dev studio doing the ports. We're only three core devs working on all of that. So what does that mean? It means Chien pretty much by himself has been handling PS4/Xbox One and PS5 development. While Tim and I pressed on adding all the new content, and features to the game for our v1.0 launch. This also includes the recent PS5 trailers, store page setups all of which have been a substantial amount of work in an of itself.
What's going to be in v1.0 launch?
A lot actually. There are the final boss battles that were pretty huge accomplishments both technically and content wise for us. We also were able to squeeze in quite a bit from our backlog of tasks as well as adding in quite a bit of new content focusing around story/lore/quest/collectibles. In some ways, it might feel like an expansion pack for those that have already played the current Early Access version. So we're pretty proud of what we accomplished thus far.
Optimizations/Polish
Recently, we ran a couple more hefty optimization tasks focused around our destructible tech that are pretty kick ass for both console and PC. It was a fairly significant overhaul and to complete this work meant we'd need to hold back an intended Early Access Xmas release with the 7th boss and combine it with the overall v1.0 release. This also helped us focus on the remaining v1.0 content which I think most people want anyways.
Q1 2021? You said it was done...SHIP IT NOW!
In fall of 2020, we had put out a trailer for PS5 announcement, with an estimate for a Q1 2021 v1.0 launch out of Early Access. We're close to that expected window. Actually, we could've shipped this March possibly earlier even with all the crap we dealt with but we figured it best to polish this a bit more instead of releasing a build hot off the presses. I'd update our estimate to put us in mid/end April window. I mean again it's an estimate especially given how this year has been but it's definitely close as we're content complete, we are through certification for PS4/PS5/Xbox One and we're in the process of getting the console keys for our Kickstarter backers setup. So it's a matter of polishing out those game spots, getting our launch trailer prepped and the final global regions ready for launch.
The game is not "dead", development is probably the busiest we've ever been! There are days where we're dead tired and even then we're still pumped about making this the best it can be...don't even get me started all the things we want to do after releasing out of Early Access. O.O
Thanks again for your patience we're almost there!
Brian
A picture is worth a thousand...hours of work?
When working on a game or really anything that takes a great deal of time and effort you can get caught up in all the things you still have left to do and forget all the things you have fixed, polished, and improved. So this weekend we took a little bit of time to retake some screenshots for the Steam page. We figured it'd be fun if we retook the screenshots virtually 1 to 1 to see the progress.
We knew the game has improved since our first release, but when we actually saw it side by side it blew us away. Also, these are just screenshots they don't even show the countless optimizations, gameplay improvements, lore and content we've added. Not to mention there's all the other stuff we're still working on and plan to release soon.:)
Also, HUGE thanks to all the players posting amazing screenshots with the new Photo Mode we released. We're addicted to refreshing the screenshot page to see the new pictures pop in. They totally boost our morale and get us pumped to work even harder on the game. So please keep them coming! We're considering using our Instagram to share our favorites. We've never made a post on our instagram because we didn't really know what to post but this seems like a cool idea. Let us know;)
Thanks again to everyone that has supported us during our development,
No Matter Studios
ps. We've never done a "Steam News Post" before and this was something we thought was worth sharing. If you like more blogg-ish dev stuff let us know!
Below the images are before/after
NOTE: some were taken when storms weren't present, and the last 2 images are simply two we like. Ha!
Edit:
Looks like some are concerned we removed storms or fog. Fog and storms are still very present in the game. Color wise you can still apply the original filter which we call "classic" or a slightly more HDR'd version called "Muted".
Anyways, here's a pic that demonstrates that the fogs and storms are still very much there;)
Photo Mode / Stats Page / Updated Visuals, Map Art and more!
We're incredibly proud to release our latest update.
This update improves the quality of visuals and optimizations for players from both high and low end machines.
Photo Mode
Photo Mode offers many options to help you take your photos to the next level. With settings for camera controls, post effects, color grading, and depth of field the direction you can take your photos in is vast. Photo mode ties in seamlessly with Steam's Screenshot system so simply jump into photo mode, setup your shot and press F12!
We really enjoy the screenshots players take when playing the game and can not wait to see what you come up with in our new Photo Mode. Share them on Steam but also feel free to share with us your best shots on Twitter, and Facebook too!
Stats Page
Another highly requested feature is a stats page. For our first pass we wanted to get the essentials in. Things like Boss defeat times, Totems collected, Lore notes found, and a number of other stats that'll help with tracking achievements and more.
Boss Timer
Many of our speedrunners have their own solutions for tracking their times. However, for people like myself that aren't at that level yet but want to easily track their times when replaying bosses we've added a timer to the echo mode. The timer records the time during the battle so beginning and ending cutscenes are not counted towards the time. We'll continue to listen player feedback on this and can't wait to see you share your best times!
Improved character outfits and textures
Since photo mode and the implementation of HDR we spent some time on the player outfits, and textures through out the game. We'll continue to improve these as we work towards out v1.0 release but even in this pass the results are great and really pull out a lot of the details that have always been there but were subdued in previous lighting models.
Playable Filters
The visual preset filters can also be applied while you play. We default to the dynamic preset and offer a number of interesting filters to try out and if you prefer the original look we offer that as the "classic" preset.
Shadows and Fur Shell Count
We've enabled some higher end graphic settings and optimizations with the introduction of Shadows, Fur Shadows, and Fur Shell Count. Soft shadows will default on the highest quality setting however with so many different PC configurations we felt it was better to be cautious and allow users to turn these on/off based on their current performance. Most higher end machines can easily crank up the distance and resolution without seeing any performance hit as well middle graphical settings should be capable of handling shadows. For lower end machines, we don't recommend turning on shadows at all. Fur Shell Count can be raised up on higher end machines to give a smoother look to the fur and lowered as it could help with frame rate, especially on boss battles. Feel free to drop us some feedback about your performance with our in-game feedback tool.
New Map Art Update
We've improved the map to aid players when exploring, and further immerse them in the games lore. With an entire overhaul visually we asked an incredible map artist, Francesca Baerald to improve the overall look. She hand drew and water colored the map and border. Francesca's work can be seen in a number of great games including Octopath Traveler and Greedfall. We are incredibly happy with the visuals and hope it helps many of you find your way around. We've also added a couple of things to the map including locations of the bosses after they've been defeated as well as the tears in the sky are now visible on the map to further aid with players that needed that extra nudge to figure out where to go next.
Check out Francesca's other work here:
http://www.francescabaerald.com/
Twitter - @FBaerald
New Additions:
- Added Photo Mode
- Added Stats Page
- Added Color presets for use in game and photo mode, select-able in Options
- Added Shadows to graphics options
- Added Fur Shells to graphics options
- Added icons for next boss and defeated boss to the map
Updates:
- Updated Map art
- Updated Light, Medium and Heavy outfits details and textures.
- Updated grappling hook icons that better reflect damage in game
- Updated tutorial area to have a more obvious exit
- Updated Unity version
Fixes:
- Fixed pause menu being accessible during load, causing teleportation
- Fixed missing collision on some ice rocks
- Fixed collision on broken totem in water silo
- Fixed holes in caves
- Fixed seams in world snow
What's next!?
As we work towards our v1.0 there are a couple of things left that we want to get into the game. Obviously, there are the last 2 bosses which are now in production but we're also focused on some additional content, and polish that'll help round out the game where we think it needs it.
Known Issues:
- After defeating a boss and returning to it the first time the boss may be without a texture. Of you play it in echo mode or reload the game the texture will reappear. It's a weird one and we're still looking into it.
- Rarely when playing a boss and finishing a sigil one of the smoke particle fx will become corrupted and cause a graphical glitch. This is incredibly rare for us to repro so if you do have it happen please send us in-game feedback so we can review the log file and save file. Upon reloading the game the issue will be removed and typically won't show up again for quite a while.
We think we have a fix in this build for the issue however again it's very rare.
Follow Praey for the Gods development
Review our Early Access Roadmap
https://trello.com/b/4KETTtYc/praey-for-the-gods-development-roadmap
You can also find out about the latest PFTG updates in all sorts of ways.
Follow the No Matter Studios and Praey for the Gods Steam groups to get a notification on Steam. Sign up to the PFTG Newsletter to receive quarterly updates on our development.
You can also follow us on social media
Discord Chat with fans and the Praey for the Gods Dev Team
@Praeyforthegods on Twitter
YouTube for trailers and reposted Dev Streams.
Twitch for Development Streams
Keep it coming!
No Matter Studios
Praey for the Gods Live-Stream / Broadcast May 8th 11am PST
We'll be broadcasting a live dev-stream today May 8th at 11am PST to support the Indie MEGABOOTH Going Away (for now) Sale.
Come swing by to watch us play and discuss development on Praey for the Gods.
The link below will link to our broadcast.
https://steamcommunity.com/broadcast/watch/76561198309822666
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/indiemegabooth
Thanks again and hope to see you in the stream!
-No Matter Studios