DevLog #12 Harpoons, Spiked Roller of Doom and Mechanical Blocks
Hello Greenhorns!
Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been busy adding in a bunch of cool new blocks, some most excellent BattleSeas content and some structural changes for our September update, so it’s been heads down for the most part!
Please watch this informative video of the new Spiked Roller Block mowing down one of those pesky fish:
• Added a 'Spawn Ship' button to sandbox mode - spawns a random ship based on the class the player is currently in, can spawn workshop ships that have been downloaded and saved to local
• Rotating Spiky Block - added force to teeth which results in some interesting things…
• Drill & Wheel Saw blocks - code to support drilling/sawing functionality
• Rotating cube block - rotates by keypress, swings whatever is attached to it round, like a flail
• Hinge joint block - allows things to move on a pivot...
• Fixed bug - cannon balls still show exploding VFX underwater
• Fixed bug - Triple Cannon had no impact VFX on terrain
• Rotating blocks in one axis animate smoothly, in others they just snap. All should be smooth.
• AI upgrade stage 1 - Acceleration management & pathfinding around terrain
• Added Total Blocks in the ship widgets
• Load raft at start of game for anyone, so they can start with a ship
• Added the Spring Detonator block
• Fixed bug - flickering redblocks when mouse hovers over rotation direction indicator
• Added Mine block - attachable mines, deployable to activate (also activates on cannon ball hit or enough damage to trigger it)
• Rocket booster block - apply an instant boost to thrust for a duration
• Attach point - optimisations. now even more ships are optimised!
• Changed order of modes to direct players into Battleseas as our current main content area
• Changed the words Add - Delete to Build - Remove
• NEW game start up - first time a player enters any mode, give them a popup screen with 3 options of ships to choose from (1-build your own, 2-raft, 3-galley). these are pre-built ships that are always available to load
• Added Survival battles to all Battleseas
• Racing – Manifest races work
• Key Bindings - Added the ability to bind specific blocks to specific keys.
• Did some Main menu visual tweaks
The Gauntlet Challenge is still ongoing and ends on August 24th, and there aren’t too many entries at the moment so there’s still chance to win one of the awesome prizes!
As Harpoons are now working betterer (technical term that is) we thought we’d show them off pulling down the home of a few of the natives…:
https://youtu.be/MB8zwqsRMOg
Thank you to everyone who voted for us in the Alienware’s Game Showcase Challenge, we’re not sure if we made it through yet but let you know just as soon as we do!
Finally, here are some awesome player created ship designs from the workshop:
The Knife Head by seigeawsome001! This ship blew us away when we saw it!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=738656388
The force is strong in this one: great ship by xInf3rn0, the Millennium Falcon!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=742558557
Those exhausts should get a great upgrade in the next update with the new rocket booster blocks! ːsteamhappyː
Budd9570 is proving that not all great ships have to be big! Here is his “Manta Strike Ship”
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=740819887
Avraks made a beautifully curved Man-O-War named the HMS Panacea
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=745466379
The Spiked Roller in all its spiky glory:
Chocks away! No wait, that’s not right…
SPG
Help Needed! - Alienware Indie Developer Contest!
Hi Monster Hunting Shipwrights!
We could really do with your help if you'd be so kind!
We're taking part in Alienware's latest Game Showcase Challenge where we can win lots of very good co-marketing partnership prizes, BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP!
Please click on this link:
https://eu.alienwarearena.com/contest/entries/game-showcase-challenge
Then scroll over The Last Leviathan figurehead icon where a +1 button should pop up, just hit that button with your mouse cursor! YES! that's a vote in the bag! nice.
This would be just AWESOME as Alienware are rather big and nice and make great PC's, we could be being promoted alongside their awesome machines! how good would that be?! Yeah I know, AWESOME!!!
You can find out more about it here: https://indie.alienwarearena.com/contest/game-showcase-challenge
Thank you, you brilliant Human Beans! (name the film) :)
SPG
DevLog #11 Gauntlet runs, and Epic Environments!
Hello Viking Saboteurs!
Last week we put out a big update that includes new rotation options, MORE optimization, and new blocks! So if you haven’t checked it out yet, nows your chance! Our next large update is a very ambitious one and will take us until near the end of september (we think!) to implement. It involves a lot of new content for you to destroy your way through and we’re extremely excited about it! If you want to know more about it, then just track our progress and read the details in the changelogs on these weekly posts :)
Currently our “Run the Gauntlet” challenge is ongoing, and we have quite a few really great and creative entries! Our current first place run is held by Hemlis! Here’s his very creative run:
https://youtu.be/87UCrp9_Bl0
ChangeLog Tasks what have been done this week are:
<*>Added Option: Reset Battle Seas so you can replay it all again
<*>Captain Cabin Blocks - windows
<*>Updated to latest unity & updated relevant plugins
<*>Added new flail chain block which players can attach stuff to
<*>Implement Spiky roller of doom...
<*>Localisation - Add "description" column to languages sheet, avoid importing on CSV load.
<*>Add "Restart required" message to language select dropdown in options.
<*>Localisation - extract all text into excel file for localisation
<*>Bug-Fix: Fixed a problem where trying to place a block on a ship could sometimes cause an Epileptic Fit Inducing strobe light show. Trying to click <*>the block would them sometimes cause an assert.
<*>Spiked Roller: Stubbed out some audio effects. These are all logically in place and currently use existing sounds (e.g. flamethrower stuff for ramping up,loop,down, etc).
<*>Harpoon: Stubbed out some audio effects here, too. Again, re-using existing stuff for the time being.
<*>Bug-Fix: The 9 key could actually turn on a spiked roller for AI ships so I've stopped that.
<*>The Flail chain links have been made even more stable. They're less likely to break now as you drag something in your wake whilst turning sharply.
<*>Harpoon block - make work betterer. This now works betterer
<*>Wrecking Balls - add 3 for flail like coolness when attached to new chain!
added a 'Spawn Ship' button to sandbox mode - spawns a random ship based on the class the player is currently in
<*>AI - implement speed manager & Pathfinding round islands
<*>Dorenmor - new environment - lighting setup and optimisation
Here’s a sneak peek at our new epic environment coming in the next update:
To round off, here’s this week’s featured ships:
First off, we have The Barbarian, by xInf3rn0. It’s a great looking, traditional-style ship:
Update V0.1.3 (Build 118) - minor update and bug fixes
Hi guys,
After the HUGE Optimisation update earlier this week, we found and fixed a few issues, adjusted a few numbers and wanted to respond to your feedback by releasing this update before the weekend!
Corrected Keel display weights.
Blocks with the ability to resist damage, now show their ‘Damage Resistance’ value as a %age in the Block Info panel.
Options screen now has a "Reset Battle Seas" button but only when invoked from the Main Menu. This, unsurprisingly, will Reset your Battle Seas progress allowing you to start again.
Bug-Fix: The Battle Seas, Versus and Events panels were still enabled after they had been faded out.
Options screen will now display an appropriate confirmation message if you Reset the Tutorial, Battle Seas or Option defaults.
Balancing: Some small changes to damage, armour and health systems.
Power: Some minor power changes to several blocks.
Bug-Fix: Battle Seas win text had a typo that was corrected.
Tweaks to some Battle Seas opponents in Cog and Hulk Class.
Bug-Fix: Corrected a typo in a Battle Seas completed message.
Bug-Fix: Fixed typo in "1 Stars" message in Battle Seas activity.
Bug-Fix: Ingame Keys dialog no longer destroys the Ingame UI thereby resetting Throttle and Rudder, etc. You can now continue to sail with the keys panel visible.
Bug-Fix: Block rotation would sometimes "gimbal lock" leading to loss of rotation in one axis.
Bug-Fix: If you had previously unlocked Hulk Class Battle Seas with lower star requirement, it is unlocked again as long as you earned at least one star in Hulk Class.
Bug-Fix: Battle Seas was missing some of the new ship additions.
Bug-Fix: Typos corrected where "Destory..." was used instead of "Destroy..."
Bug-Fix: Rudder power was applied even when not moving causing weird "rudder spins". Rudder only applies force when moving and has a small application ramp.
As always, your feedback and comments are welcome. Thanks and have a great weekend guys!
Massive welcome as always to our new players and huge thank you to all you veterans!
This update has taken a little longer than our previous ones, but that’s cos we’ve added more! I’ll get right into it:
Optimisations – We’ve done loads more work in this area, so much so that you should now be able to play with 1k block ships! This draws an end to this round of optimisations, we will focus on content for the immediate future.
32bit version – is here! This we believe is the solution to players reporting not being able to download the exe. Turns out that steam doesn’t detect if your machine is 64 or 32bit so even though we stated 64 bit on our min spec, it still allowed players to purchase the game with a 32bit system. So rather than disappoint those players, we’ve done a 32bit version (something we weren’t planning on doing!)
Wave Machine – we’ve added the ability to tweak and change the waves in CREATIVE mode ONLY. All other modes are gameplay related and have rewards, so we get to control those ːsteamhappyː Have a play.
GAUNTLET EVENT – it’s time to run the gauntlet! A new type of event this time, where you need to race to the target area whilst not getting ravaged by the mines and turrets! Some nice rewards for this one so go check it out
3rd person firing – we’ve implemented arc lines to this mode to show where your cannons will fire. Pressing SHIFT and moving your mouse will show them (if mouse cursor is over a valid target). You can turn this on all the time or off all the time in options.
Cannon balls now continue into water, reduce speed and do damage to anything they hit in there
Balancing – We’ve done another round of balancing on all blocks and have tweaked the power costs, damage & health for all blocks. This will mean that some of your ships may now be overpowered in BattleSeas.
Concave Hull Blocks – added some cool new hull blocks that are curvy.
Quick FPS Select – You can now use the keys 1,2,3,4 to quickly enter FPS mode. 1=Portside, 2=Fore, 3=Starboard, 4=Aft. Pressing the same key again will cycle through the weapons on the relevant side.
Newsletter Subscriber email – We had an issue here and didn’t capture emails so please re-input your email if you wish to subscribe – no newsletters have been sent yet!
V0.1.3 (Build 116) Changelog • Rebalanced the sails - The largest sail imparts a lot more force. The smaller ones have been reduced slightly. Costs and weights have also been re-aligned to fit with the thrust that they give.
• Fixed issue on the sails where the large and extra-large sails thought they were logically bigger than they were
• Fixed issue with the sails where one would see a chug when hovering over a sail with the same sail selected. Fiddled with the cloth settings on the sails to improve their look to compensate for the vertices loss.
• updated min & recommended specs
• Added joints that have less strength
• Definable start position (Default to origin if not found)
• Optimisation - Raytracing - sails chug in editor mode
• Optimisation - Coalesce physics in larger ships, added option to remove this feature in options
• Fix email subscriber issue - if you have already put your email in here, please do so again as we had an issue with a silent failure on this! sorry!
• Fixed some typo’s in tips
• TIP - add 'bottom' to the keel tip to give a hint on where it goes as a number of players/youtubers weren’t aware that it is mean to be placed at the bottom of a ship…
• 32-bit version – build it, tested it and fixed it.
• NEW Block rotations - WASD keys now give players more options to rotate
• Creative Waves Option – Creative mode only – Added options to play with the waves
• Water culler – Disabled this as it was causing more issues than it was solving. Need to come back to this later and make it work betterer
• Added new gate checkpoint system for new event and subsequent challenges
• Cannon balls now continue into water at a reduced speed and do damage if they hit stuff
• Lights in scene - there's an Option in the settings to enable/disable dynamic lights.
• Fire on Coalesced Blocks – This now works with our coalesced blocks. Fire is bad for your ship…
• added stone house blocks to prop editor for new environment (not revealed in this update)
• added new rounded blocks for ship building coolness
• Implemented NEW 3rd person firing, tested it, took it out again! back to the drawing board!
• Implemented another 3rd person firing solution, which is much better. Weapon Arcs now controlled via Options (3 modes) and display yellow/red with alpha fade if reloading. Targeting reticule now show White/Red as appropriate. (3rd person cam)
• Balancing - Tweaked damage for all weapons and tweaked health for all blocks - Balancing round 2
• Added new Gauntlet EVENT scene
• Added feature for removing all joints (public).
• Added feature for the weakening of joints.
• Balanced the power stats for weapons in line with new health and damage
• Siege housing blocks - Viking village & Viking castle type blocks
• New 3rd Person Crosshairs x 2 (can shoot & can't shoot)
• Message backgrounds updated and moved
• Resized icons
• Added concave curved blocks
• Prop Editor – fixed up camera zoom out bug
• Submerged Block function – mines can now sustain a submerged status, which should help to stop pesky subs!
• Block max text - when a ship goes above 800 blocks, display text. Not a cap but something to warn the player that over this number will likely cause FPS issues.
• Fixed timing of AI triple cannon so that they fire at the same rate as the player
• Updated Version notes in main menu
• AI - In ships that are built very obviously backwards, turn the helmsblock around so that the AI doesn't just run away thinking that its actually moving towards the player
• AI ships now don’t give up as easily.
• KEEL - added VERY HEAVY to the description on these
• Added Bow curved blocks
• Add 6 more pirate ships in each class (Cog & Hulk) to destroy
• Wind direction - changed to match direction of the waves
• Fixed BUG - thumbnails not actually updating the thumbnail for the ship
• Tweaked text size (need to find another font too)
• Quick cannon keys - pressing 1,2,3 or 4 selects a cannon and goes into FPS mode keep pressing each one to cycle between guns on that side
• Adjust top/left messages guttering and possible screen scale issues (not scaling gutter?!) - Not working on shallow & wide layout
• Changed the checkpoint icon
• Animated the checkpoint indicator
• Added tutorial for shooting mechanics
• Various other small bugs and fixes
Ok so next up is our MEGA MELEE update, which will also include the next BattleSeas Class opening up and a heap of other cool stuff to do! Yikes!
As always, feedback and comments are very welcome!
SPG
DevLog #10 Optimization and Rotation!
Happy Weekend Captains!
This week, we have quite a bit of exciting new changes and features that are coming up to show you, and of course a few awesome community ships to show off!
YET ANOTHER round of optimization has been done! The end result of all these optimsaions can be seen in this easy to view youtube video where we have the Tank playing nicely with the Chinese mega ship: https://youtu.be/8jzOGi2ax5Y
Built a 32-bit version, tested it and fixed resulting issues. This version should FIX the CAN’T DOWNLOAD issue a few people have reported. Turns out steam doesn’t detect if you have a 64bit or 32 bit operating system!
The long-requested feature of more rotation options has been added! WOOT!
Added some options to control the waves in sandbox mode...turn them off, make them bigger etc!
Disabled the water-culler for now, until it can work better with more designs.
Cannon balls now penetrate the water, but lose speed doing so and will
damage blocks that they hit.
Added an option to enable/disable dynamic lights
Added new rounded and support blocks for ships!
Added new 3rd person firing method, tested it, didn’t like it, took it out, then redid it, added it again, and now it’s looking good! Though it may not make it into the next update as it's not quite there yet...
Did another round of balancing by tweaking weapon damage and health.
All these changes and more should be coming in a new update that will be out next week, so stay tuned!
And now is the part where we show off some awesome community ships soo….check these out!
First we have a Yacht! Created by 15216847446 (seriously, that’s their name):
And that’s it for this week! Keep an eye out next week for our big new update that’s coming, and I’ll see you then!
Happy Sailing!
DevLog #9 More Optimization!
Happy Weekend Sailors!
This week I’d like to talk about some exciting work that has been done, and show off some more community creations!
First off, some of the work done this week includes:
- another round of optimization has been done, and the next build will feature a bunch of new options to turn on and off to gain you some better framerate!
- Sails have been balanced a bit.
- The Main Menu scene has been optimized also, turning off a bunch of unnecessary physics calculations.
- The options menu now is accessible in the ship builder screen.
- Many essential bugfixes have been done.
- Sails have also been optimized a bit, and will no longer lag your game when placing them
Also, another reminder that we have a NEW challenge going on right NOW! It is the Ironblast Challenge, with a whole new ship to defeat! You can view the leaderboard and discussion thread here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/489460/discussions/0/358417008713936470/
And now, here is a few really awesome ships created by the community, that we thought would be rather nice to show off!
First off, Is it a spider, or is it a catamaran? It’s The Rotted Recluse, by Guitarnut!
And lastly, but not least.....ly? We have The Stable Rammer Mk2 by Hoelbrak. This design looks and performs great, and should benefit greatly from our future Melee update!
So look forward to the upcoming fixes and changes mentioned above, and see you next week!
-Kimmy T
Update V0.1.2 (build 110) - bug fix
Hi all, just rolled out a quick update which fixes a couple of small issues we found:
ChangeLog V0.1.2 (build 110)
• Fixes for playing Workshop items from Events and Versus modes.
• Hide GUI for sail/docking modes whilst in FPS Camera mode.
Thank you!
Update V0.1.2 (build 109), Road Map, Mac Version & Optimisations!
Hello everyone!
Welcome to you lovely players, new and old and happy July 4th to our USA brethren!
Ok so we’ve been very hard at working listening to you guys and have had our heads down deep into optimization recently. We’re glad to say that we’ve made a number of improvements that *should* give everyone a good FPS boost! Hurrah! We’re nowhere near finished on optimization but wanted to roll this improvement out to you guys asap.
We’ve also added a ‘Physics Joint CPU Allocation’ option to the options menu which means you have more power at your fingertips should you want to go in and tweak the game to better suit your rig. Though beware that reducing this to low will give you better FPS at the tradeoff of ‘bendiness’ of joints – you’ll see what I mean when you try it ːsteamhappyː
On top of all that, we’ve implemented a MAC version for those of you of the apple persuasion. This is our first Mac version and whilst we do have a number of Mac’s in the studio we don’t have many, so if any of you could find the time to test version and feedback any issues, that would be HUGELY appreciated.
NEW EVENT!!! Yes we have, we’ve added a new EVENT for you to get down and dirty with on youtube and twitch. This one should be a bit more of a challenge for you…
Road Map After many a conversation internally on what we should focus on next we have decided on the following:
The Optimisation + Siege Mode Update + editor rotations
Our next update will focus again on optimisation; we were aware when we launched that we had a high min spec but probably not aware enough about the impact that would have on so many players. We want to remove the current limits on your creativity as much as possible so will spend the next couple of weeks focused mainly on optimizations.
This update will also have ‘Siege’ mode implemented into BattleSeas Classes. This is where you can lay siege to ground based buildings that attack back and can deploy ships to help them! Eeek!
More rotations for blocks – yes we heard you, its coming!
We’re also building a new environment for you to play in, though we’re not sure exactly how long that will take to finish, so this may not make it into this update.
We expect this to take around 2-3 weeks depending on testing.
Following the release of the above version, we then start work on: The Mega Melee Update
This one we’re extremely excited about. We had to turn off Melee damage just before release as the additional framerate hit was too much. As we’ve been optimizing we’ve also figured out a way to turn this back on without hitting the framerate too badly.
Turning Melee damage back on isn’t enough for us though, we want to make Melee battling a LARGE feature of our game, and so have come up with some very cool ideas that we’ll implement as part of this update. I actually cannot wait to show you this, I may actually explode.
We expect this update to take us 4-5 weeks so expect it around the end of Aug, start of Sept.
We’ll keep updating you each week on our progress through our DevLogs on Friday’s and of course once we’re through these cool updates, we’ll plan out the next ones.
V0.1.2 (Build 109) Changelog
• Optimisations – focused on graphical settings and physics.
• Thumbnails don't include Mount Points when taking a screenshot.
• When Rudder and Propeller blocks are disabled (detached from helm) they now stop.
• AI projectiles no longer defy the laws of Physics when seeking their target.
• Ships that stand or get stuck now self-destruct after a while.
• Text message for "New Ship" has been changed.
• Updated version text in main menu
• Mac version!
• New EVENT - Ironblast!
• Options screen from the Main Menu. Allows control over Physics Joint CPU load.
• Fantastic Settings now sets VSync to prevent GPU overload.
• Some tweaks to the different Graphics performance options.
• More tips.
• AI ships are harder to beat.
• Changed start position for most scenes to allow for bigger ship building
• Closed the ability to keep docking if you are out of the world.
• Various other little tweaks and fixes that we noticed and fixed along the way but didn’t write down anywhere so can’t put here! Where’s our producer? He’ll have something to say about this I’m sure…
Feedback welcome as always!!!
DevLog #8 Creative Creations!
Happy Friday Sailors!
This week we worked hard and pushed out a new update for you all that addressed a few of the problems many of you have been having. You can read up on that update and see the full changelog here: http://steamcommunity.com/games/TLLeviathan/announcements/detail/924744079584817503
We’ve also been going through all of your submissions for the Stormranger Challenge and WOW it’s amazing to see how inventive people are! The top time is currently 17 SECONDS with 3 STARS! That means that they managed to blow up the Stormranger with their ship having 75% health or above! Keep in mind that the last day for submissions is July 4th, at 1 PM EST!
To add to that, we’ve also been going through many of your Steam Workshop creations, and are just amazed at the unique ships people are making! As of this post, there are well over 1,100 items submitted to the workshop! To celebrate that, here are a few designs that we thought are worth showcasing:
First off, we have ISDProcrastinator, and their aircraft carrier! (If only we had planes to land on it!)
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=714477406
Next we have Searbing, with their small, framerate-friendly battleship!
And lastly, and probably the most impressive “ship” I’ve seen thus far, is ANOTHER creation by Embermore, but this time, he took the term “houseboat” a LITTLE too seriously:
