We're thrilled with how the release has gone and are overwhelmed by the positive feedback—a huge thank you to everyone who bought and is playing ZEPHON! It's extremely motivating to see after working on the project for this many years.
While during the first week we mainly focused on chasing down bugs and taking in feedback, rest assured that plans to further expand and enrich the universe of ZEPHON have already been set in motion.
Stay tuned!
Changes from 1.0.0 to 1.0.7
General
Changing language or GUI scale can now only be done in the main menu to prevent crashes.
Slighty reduced priority for AI players to build loyalty buildings.
Improved performance of Tachyon explosions.
Growth hint now shows contribution from game speed.
Don't allow disbanding a transport if there are enemy units inside.
Color positive and negative standing effects of diplomatic actions in hints.
Renamed Windowed Undecorated to Borderless.
Tweaked alliance victory tip.
Tweaked Words of the Prophet AI to not use the ability if the target has very low hitpoints.
Balance
Arsham's Satchel now also affects the hero holding the item.
Increased Blighted, On Fire and Poisoned hitpoints loss each turn from 2 to 3.
Increased Causal Well enemy hitpoints loss each turn from 3 to 4.
Increased Causal Well allied hitpoints gain each turn from 3 to 4.
Increased Speciment Containment research from 2 to 3.
Words of the Prophet now requires the target to be below 50% hitpoints.
Decreased Words of the Prophet influence cost by 25%.
EMP Drones no longer work against titans.
Nightmare dying no longer causes any morale change.
Bug Fixes
Fixed the game crashing for certain Cicada Density values.
Fixed a crash in Under Observation quest with Russian or Korean language active.
Fixed a crash in Child of the New World for non-English language.
Fixed a crash that could occur in hot seat.
Fixed a potential crash when building the minimap.
Fixed interludes appearing too often.
Fixed auto-disable simultaneous turns advanced setting label not being hidden in single player.
Fixed Shoch'itris Lair not being revealed when under cover.
Fixed typo in auxiliary hud background.
Fixed Entomb not removing action points.
Fixed The Outsider and Quid Pro Quo scaling wrongly with game speed.
Fixed crash when ZEPHON city damage is reflected.
Fixed incorrect damage reflection.
Fixed auto-disable simultaneous turns not working if contact is not established.
Fixed a crash caused by taking control of Abkluth Dragoons with Words of the Prophet and losing the Toxic Spear upgrade.
Fixed Decoy Flares lasing forever.
Fixed auto-disable simultaneous turns disabling simultaneous turns right away.
Fixed potential threading issues when refreshing resources.
Fixed a potential race condition while loading the game.
Updated Vulkan Memory Allocator with new version that avoids some race conditions.
Make sure we're using 48 kHz for the audio device output frequency so we match the buffers and don't need to resample. Also prevents preformance issues of someone setting 192 kHz in Windows.
Fixed several race conditions.
Fixed certain traits wrongly showing on outposts.
Fixed Machine Evolution applying multiple times due to acquired outposts.
Fixed growth setting in advanced parameters having no effect.
Fixed crash in the mods screen when the preview png had no alpha channel.
Fixed crash when selecting a very large save in the save or load screen.
Fixed crash that could occur if you have no friends on Steam.
Fixed several race conditions.
Improved audio thread safety and performance.
Fixed that the Honorable Aristocrat gets his Price of Honor achievement by retrieving the Cornucopia personally instead of sending his men.
The option to build Voice Acolytes in Meet Your Maker is no longer available if the mutator What Are You is active.
Fixed unit responses being placed at origin if it's still playing when the unit is dead.
Fixed Concordat item costs showing with too many decimals.
Fixed very long notifications being cropped.
Hide incoming call of a player that has been defeated.
Fixed a threading issue regarding the Chieftess unleashing her units to raid.
Fixed some typos.
ZEPHON Is Now Available!
We’re beyond excited to share that ZEPHON is now officially live on Steam for everyone!
Thank you all so much for your amazing support throughout this journey.
"The Voice knew things. Impossible things. Was it petty to simply use its premonitions to see our enemies? Or was that how the Voice drew people in? Did it show them knowledge, promise power, then offer more? The Whisperer knew. She didn’t ever say."
If you're looking for reviews, an excellent one is below:
November 8th Release
We bring you news of ZEPHON's official release date: November 8th at 6 AM PT / 1 PM GMT.
Special thanks to everyone that's been helping us test the game: we squished a lot of bugs!
See you soon!
"It was all just an equation for ZEPHON. Reavers and Acrin had to scrap, steal, and fight like hell to keep their edge, but that machine was always plotting its way toward the end. Its machines' power just ticked, ticked, ticked upward… carefully calculated to match our pace. It never ran ahead. Just watched. Followed. And observed."
We've decided to move ZEPHON's release from Q3 to Q4 2024. This will give us some breathing room to make sure everything is up to our standards before we send out builds for review.
While gameplay is largerly complete, we're currently working hard on effects and the end game.
Special thanks go to everyone that has played the demos and given their invaluable feedback.
Stay sane.
ZEPHON Demo 9 (July 18th to July 29th)
The last ninth playable demo of ZEPHON will be available from July 18th (@ 12 pm CEST) to July 29th (@ 12 pm CEST) on Steam.
There are no big changes in this demo—it's meant for one final round of testing and feedback before release.
This is an early look at an in-development alpha version of the game. As such, there will be bugs, imbalances and missing assets.
The demo includes single player and multiplayer, but is limited to up to four players on a medium-sized map. 5 different leaders are available for selection and 3 NPC factions are present. Research progress is limited to the first 6 tech tiers.
The full version will contain larger maps, advanced game setup options, 8 leaders, over 50 units spread across 10 tiers of research, more terrain features and quests, an end-game grand finale, unlockable game modifiers, achievements, multiple languages as well as full workshop support.
Changes in Demo 9
## New * Whispering Wights that reduce unit morale each turn now randomly spawn on wasteland tiles. * AI players now praise wars with common enemies. * New Hashamllim Host voice over. * Actions that create units (e.g. Create Shoch'itris Lair) can now be right-clicked to open the compendium for the unit entry.
## Balance * Bleed, Dust Storm, Fire, Hymn of Decay, Incandescent Icon and The Fog no longer damage units inside transports. * Schism of Regminina can now also be used if ZEHPON is not your enemy and without repercussions from them. * Quantum Economics now decreases Quantum Manipulators cost for each Quantum Manipulators in each own city.
## Bug Fixes * Fixed diplomacy call stall issues. * Fixed Bunker flavor. * Fixed Disband pressable even without action points. * Fixed System Overload not mentioning target. * Fixed quest locations not spawning on volcanic terrain.
ZEPHON Developer interview with eXplorminate #2
Rob and Drexy were able to speak with Rok and Lorenz from Proxy Studios about their in-development post-apocalyptic 4X game, ZEPHON, and learn about their future plans, the feedback they’ve received, and much more.
This is an early look at an in-development alpha version of the game. As such, there will be bugs, imbalances and missing assets.
The demo includes single player and multiplayer, but is limited to up to four players on a medium-sized map. 5 different leaders are available for selection and 3 NPC factions are present. Research progress is limited to the first 6 tech tiers.
The full version will contain larger maps, advanced game setup options, 8 leaders, over 50 units spread across 10 tiers of research, more terrain features and quests, an end-game grand finale, unlockable game modifiers, achievements, multiple languages as well as full workshop support.
Changes in Demo 8
## New * Added tier 6 technologies (NOTE: Voice tier 6 units will hopefully be playable later in the event). * Added voiced leader reactions to enhance immersion. * Added Chayot Exterminator voice over. * Added first story interlude. * A lot of diplomacy actions now show the major impact on the decision. * AI players will now condemn you for participating in the destruction of a city of theirs that isn't the last one. * When unsuccessfully convincing an AI leader of terminating a peace treaty, trade agreement or alliance with a third party, they might report the attempt to the third party, which will then condemn the interference attempt. * Research completed screen now has a button for select research. * Show trait rank next to the small trait icons. * Previous behaviour and extortionate nature will now be listed as major decision impact when appropriate. * Added story interlude ambient audio. * Hovering the mouse over a damaging trait icon like Bleed or Sandstorm now shows damage result for the selected unit.
## General * Weapon icons of low power weapons, and heavy weapons on units that have moved, are now colored red. * Non-native factions can now be asked for third party actions on native factions. * How likely an AI is to offer gifts is now affected by their difficulty setting. * Halved the standing change for praising and condemning traits. * An AI's generosity characteristic no longer has an impact on them demanding tribute. * AI now prefers other targets over those under the effect of Dream Prison. * Renamed the Missile Team's Missile Launcher to Missile Bot. * Unit response sounds now get less quiet with the camera's distance to the unit. * Improved turn times. * Traits are now only colored as Buffs and Debuffs if they are temporary. * Made land generation more varied and natural. * AI admit defeat dialogue is now sent to everyone, not just to enemies. * When successfully convincing a player of terminating a peace treaty, trade agreement or alliance with a third party, your standing with that third party will now decrease. * Removed that when the AI rejected a map exchange, trade agreement or alliance, it would result in a guaranteed rejection when asked again in the near future. * Player abilities can now be used in quick succession. * Abilities that spawn units now also say the description of the unit. * Improved AI evaluation on when to gift. * The Informant quest no longer considers a human player for the betrayal. * Traits and weapons that come from upgrades are now colored blue. * Concordat sell and buy button backgrounds are now more visible. * Updated Anchorite voice over. * Updated icons: Fallen Orolos, Kriteria Annihilator, Bio-Acid Spray, Poisoned. * Adjusted colors to be more distinct.
## Balance * Siege Cannon is now Heavy. * Splash and Large Splash now hit additional group members with half accuracy. * Increased Fragmentation Grenade damage from 1 to 1.5. * Decreased Anti-Armor Grenade damage from 3 to 2. * Increased Anti-Armor Grenade armor penetration from 2 to 3. * Increased Bio-Acid Spray damage from 1.5 to 2. * Increased Busters accuracy from 5 to 6. * Shoch'itris Lair now costs 30 food and 15 algae. * A newly constructed Bunker can no longer shoot in the same turn. * Reduced Hymn of Decay attacks from 12 to 6. * Hymn of Decay can no longer be cast on tiles that already have Hymn of Decay. * Reduced Assassinate hitpoint damage from +2...+6 to +1...+3. * Reduced Erelim Assassin armor from 6 to 4. * Increased Commander armor from 4 to 6. * Increased Whisperer of Goldrauch accuracy from 6 to 8. * Increased Horrors of Space damage from 1.5 to 2. * Increased Horrors of Space armor penetration from 2 to 3. * Reduced Disintegrate damage from 16 to 12. * Reduced Disintegrate armor penetration from 8 to 7. * Anchorite is no longer more likely to gift. * Chieftess is now a bit less aggressive as well as a bit more trustworthy and generous, to make befriending her more reasonable. * Reavers and Busters bought from the Chieftess as support can now use Nomadic Life and Hijack. * Added Ignores Cover to Hymn of Decay. * Increased Bio-Acid Spray armor penetration from 2 to 3. * Toxic Spearhead now causes Poisoned (-2 hitpoints next turn) to biological units instead of increasing attacks against biological units. * Units On Fire now lose 2 hitpoints per turn instead of taking On Fire weapon damage. * Changed Shoch'itris Lair cost for Dark Vassael from 30 food and 15 algae to 20 algae. * Reduced Baneful Omen attacks from 2 to 1. * Reduced Cr'la's Gambit attacks from 2 to 1. * Rebalanced advanced resource values and their production buildings. * Increased Tachyon Ray damage from 2 to 4. * Increased Tachyon Ray armor penetration from 3 to 5. * Decreased Tachyon Ray attacks from 2 to 1. * Weakening now also affects large enemies (but not titans). * Increased Dark Vassael armor from 0 to 2. * Increased Surthodai's Embrace armor from 2 to 4. * Increased Fallen Orolos armor from 2 to 4. * Increased Blighted hitpoint loss from 2 to 4 per turn. * Decreased Blighted duration from Fallen Orolos from 3 to 1. * Decreased Pestilence cooldown from 3 to 1. * Increased Orolos Cannon armor penetration from 6 to 7. * Increased Surthodai's Hand armor penetration from 5 to 6. * Decreased Tune duration from 3 to 1. * Reduced Aranean Cloak cover damage reduction from 33% to 17%. * Abyssal Rage no longer increases damage taken. * Dark Caress now only works on biological units, but also restores 1 hitpoint each turn, including to the Surthodai's Embrace and units in its cargo. * Cry of Contrition now only works on biological units, but sacrifices 2...6 hitpoints instead of 3...9. * Increased max morale of headquarters from 8 to 10. * Removed extra damage taken from Frenzy. * Halved Choral Celerity influence cost. * Accuracy is now capped at 12 (100%). * Increased attacks of Bleed and Fire from 3 to 4.
## Bug Fixes * Fixed Valhalla sometimes not increasing when a unit dies if there are multiple Valkyrias being used. * Fixed Valkyria's Gugnir damage going crazy with Valhalla active. * Fixed units with NPC advancement giving too much experience. * Fixed traits affecting unit costs not working. * Fixed missing Well-Fed trait icon. * Fixed explosions not showing on high animation speeds. * Fixed explosion sounds sometimes not playing. * Fixed Hashamllim Host being a transport. * Fixed loading tips sometimes being cut off. * Fixed an issue when playing streamed sounds like ambient and music. * Fixed Dance of the Erelim being usable without adjacent enemies. * Fixed Tactical Visor not working when adjacent to more than 1 Ishim Enforcer. * Fixed Frenzy not working when adjacent to more than 2 enemies. * Fixed AI leaders not researching new infantry units and infantry upgrades (How did no one notice?). * Fixed dust showing when weapons on fortifications rotate. * Fixed a bug that resulted in AI heroes not using many of their abilities. * Fixed research filters not being stored for clients in multiplayer. * Fixed Experimental Drugs (Berserk) end not changing to the correct player. * Fixed diplomacy and quests screens flickering out-and-in in multiplayer due to ping delay. * Fixed a second incoming call from the same player showing in multiplayer even if the second incoming call has already been closed. * Fixed crash in multiplayer when you re-call a player you were just in a call with and before they close their call. * Fixed blocking a caller in multiplayer also making sure to block condemns already pending. * Fixed a rare map generation crash. * Fixed capturing a unit not collecting the cache on the tile. * Fixed "Leashed" text appearing when capturing an unleashed unit. * Fixed Chieftess never founding new cities. * Fixed Assassinate above level 1 not applying Crippling properly. * Fixed some building trait upgrades not showing in the hint. * Fixed Evasive Maneuvers not having a duration of 1. * Fixed quest screen sometimes getting stuck. * Fixed wrong production turn duration in hints of not queued actions. * Fixed NPC advancements not increasing production cost. * Fixed thrown grenades not being visible and not rotating with flight curve. * Fixed units forgetting their rally target when moving out after being produced. * Fixed Shoch'itris Lair, Bunker and Tessera Core not playing appear sounds. * Fixed hitpoints sometimes being incorrect when a unit is taken over. * Fixed Bleed Cultivation allowing construction of defensive structures on Bleed even outside of cities. * ZEPHON blacksite quest now uses ZEPHON's instead of Fallen Soldier's HQ unit model. * Fixed Smoke Screen from Vanquisher lasting forever. * Fixed an issue with units sometimes starting a wrong path when coming out of production. * Fixed issues with planting Bleed with Construction Yard.
## Modding * Deep and shallow water color are now specified in Environment.xml. Note: The environment parameters can be reloaded while the game is running by pressing Ctrl+R.
Steam Next Fest Stream
Come join us in celebration and let us know what you think of ZEPHON.
This is an early look at an in-development alpha version of the game. As such, there will be bugs, imbalances and missing assets.
The demo includes single player and multiplayer, but is limited to up to four player on a medium-sized map. 5 different leaders are available for selection and 3 NPC factions are present. Research progress is limited to the first 5 tech tiers.
The full version will contain larger maps, advanced game setup options, 8 leaders, over 50 units spread across 10 tiers of research, more terrain features and quests, an end-game grand finale, unlockable game modifiers, achievements, multiple languages as well as full workshop support.
Changes in Demo 7
## New * Added tier 5 technologies. * Added victory screens for each leader. * Added loading screen tips. * Added new tutorial tips. * Added ability to play an introduction game. * Added ability to hide Human, Voice or Cyber technologies from the research view.
## General * Tips are now sorted alphabetically in the compendium. * Tweaked attribute hints.
## Balance * Added Blighted condition, which causes hitpoints loss over time based on rank. * Toxic Spearhead now applies Blighted (1) for 3 turns instead of dealing increased damage to biological units. * Reduced hitpoints of Dark Vassael from 48 to 32. * Increased accuracy of Dark Vassael from 5 to 6. * Reduced hitpoints of Surthodai's Embrace from 48 to 32. * Reduced accuracy of Exousia Marauder from 7 to 6. * Increased Surthodai's Hand damage from 6 to 8. * Increased Surthodai's Hand armor penetration from 4 to 5. * Reduced Shoch'itris Lair hitpoints from 48 to 32. * Reduced Elect of Uzhodai armor from 5 to 4. * Reduced Whispers of Harmony hitpoints gain from 6 to 4 and morale gain from 3 to 2. * Malakim Destroyers are now Biological in addition to Mechanical.
## Bug Fixes * Fixed crash that could occur when selecting saved games. * Fixed crash that could occur when the player removes an item for which a target is being chosen. * Fixed ending a call not removing incoming call for the other player. * Fixed not being able to accept calls from another player in multiplayer if it's not your turn. * Fixed hitpoints status when loading an autosave as Fallen Soldier. * Fixed display of accumulated resources sometimes rounding up, which gives the false illusion of having enough to produce or purchase something. * Fixed Combat Drones teleporting to land and becoming permanent when deployed on water.
